


The Man in the Crimson Cloak

by Aelaer



Series: Adventures Throughout the Multiverse [3]
Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Action/Adventure, Anyone can be alive or dead, BAMF Sherlock Holmes, BAMF Stephen Strange, But intentionally vague on that front, Crossover, Deductions, Dimension Travel, Except Thanos he's definitely dead, Gen, Illustrations, POV Sherlock Holmes, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Season/Series 01, Screenshots, Sherlock Being Sherlock, Sherlock is a Brat, Stephen Strange Bingo 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:33:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 25,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21625366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aelaer/pseuds/Aelaer
Summary: Data began to flow in from what he could see of the cloak. Red, obviously, though several shades in the weave of the fabric. Wool— cashmere, to be precise. The inner lining was made of another material (pashminasuddenly came to mind) covered in a checkered pattern. Each square in turn had intricate designs within the material, and the colors shifted in various hues of red and grey— due to age, not design. The material was weathered and worn, very worn in some places, but still remarkably intact. And while he was certain of its composition, there was… something else about it. Something he could not determine, somethingdifferent.One thing was for certain: this was no ordinary costume purchased for twenty quid. But the stranger in his flat was more than just a cloak.Sherlock’s terribly ordinary and outright dull day turns into something well beyond his wildest dreams when a most interesting stranger enters his flat.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes & Stephen Strange
Series: Adventures Throughout the Multiverse [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1364197
Comments: 62
Kudos: 192
Collections: Genuary 2021, Stephen Strange Bingo 2019





	1. Get Your Attention

**Author's Note:**

> The stories in this series are unrelated (other than that Doctor Strange is out traveling the multiverse) and each work can stand on its own unless otherwise stated. Unlike the first story in this series, the POV is entirely from Sherlock, so if you are not familiar with Doctor Strange, you will get your questions answered as the story moves forward. The story assumes a general familiarity with Sherlock as from the BBC show.
> 
> I recommend turning on the multimedia option for this fic to see all the illustrations and screenshots. Unless otherwise stated, all illustrations are my own creation. Please do not post them elsewhere online - link folks to this fic instead. :)
> 
> While I've written a Sherlock-like character before (complete with deductions), and while I've read hundreds of interpretations of him by other authors over the last couple years, this is my first time writing the BBC version of him and it was quite a bit of fun.
> 
> I also learned my lesson with my last multi-chapter fic and only started posting this once I sat at about 80% completion— I would have waited until full completion, but this is also being submitted for my final square on my Stephen Strange Bingo card for "Crossover AU". Still, it turned out that writing more than the first chapter before posting was a good idea because this supposed "one-shot, two chapters at most" story turned into six chapters. They just wouldn't _stop talking_.
> 
> Spelling alternates between British English and American English and is entirely based upon which spelling variation I like better, no matter what spellcheck tries to force me to do.
> 
> Lots and lots and lots of notes about details mentioned in this chapter can be found at the end.
> 
>  **Warning** : Sherlock's a bit mean about cosplayers in a small bit here. In his defense, he treats almost everyone on earth with equal disdain.

> "But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession, or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world." — Sherlock Holmes, _The Sign of Four_ (1890)

Life was meaningless and dull.

Sherlock could live with meaningless. It was the 'dull' part that made his current situation absolutely unbearable.

He could not remember the last time he had a case, and the lack of anything stimulating had driven him to an ennui he had not experienced in quite some time. Even the thought of the experiments he wanted to do the other day could not motivate him to stir from his position on the couch, where he laid on his stomach, face down in the cushions.

… when was the other day? Oh, who _cared_. The experiments were nowhere near interesting enough. Nothing was. Everything was boring, vapid, tedious, and not worth bothering about.

Certainly not worth bothering to get up for.

Time continued to pass in a manner not unlike a mountain of slow-moving molasses. _Would_ a mountain of molasses move faster than your average spilled bottle of molasses?

… he was sure he knew this answer. The math was simple. There was an odd disaster some one hundred years ago in America that had him at one point researching its potential as a murder weapon at certain quantities.

He abandoned the thought process. _You moron_. Why bother with such trivial, useless thoughts? It was worthless. Everything was worthless.

And so the minutes (hours, days, it didn't matter) ticked onward. Sherlock did not concern himself with the effort of keeping track of time— or perhaps he _could not_ keep track of it, but honestly, it hardly mattered. Why bother? Why did he continue to _bother_?

 _There was no reason to bother_. Besides, the couch was pretty comfortable, all things considered. And there was nothing beyond its confines worth the effort of getting up for.

Even in such states of lethargy Sherlock's mind was an ever-whirling machine, regardless of whether the foremost thought was 'everything is dull'; it was the neverending process of thought after thought after thought that once made illicit substances more attractive than a passing curiosity. However, he found his quick mind beginning to slow to something that, he imagined, more _normal_ minds resembled.

As the revolving mechanics of his brain slowed, something deep, deep down in the depths of his mind palace shouted at him. At the moment, he could not be bothered to try and open the stubbornly-shut palace doors to figure out _why_ some part of his brain was alarmed, though, and instead he observed it as if he were a third party to this strange change within his head. Sherlock thought it might be pleasant (like cocaine), but the associated shot of dopamine with the relaxing of his brain seemed missing.

Pity, that.

He continued to observe the larger part of his mind slow down while the thrum of _alarm_ and _danger_ pounded at the palace doors. Sherlock was not one to usually ignore his instincts— they were, after all, often subconscious observations that even his brilliant brain had not yet processed— but he could not help but remember that everything was _boring_ and _dull_ and _worthless_.

Time was meaningless, so he had no idea how long this process ran before something _new_ broke through the monotony of existence.

Footsteps on the stairs.

Sherlock did not stir from his position, but what focus he had yet remaining in his oddly sluggish mind he sent to concentrate on the footsteps. A heavier step; a man was likely. The gait was not someone who frequented his home often. It certainly was not his brother or his flatmate.

The _alarm_ managed to make a crack and enter the forefront of his thoughts when he realized neither of their names were coming to mind. Certainly they should; he could recall a general feeling of annoyance associated with his brother and a general feeling of fondness for his flatmate. When he tried to imagine them, however, the pictures were blurry, as if his memory had taken on the persona of a badly nearsighted person without corrective lenses.

Very annoying.

Before he could ponder this further, the footsteps came to the landing and he heard the door open. Sherlock did not bother to adjust his position, but he continued to listen. The person at the doorway paused, more than likely looking around the sitting room, then walked inside. Other than the dull thud of steps, he picked up the sound of heavy, rustling fabric; a long coat, perhaps.

The person stopped in front of Sherlock, right by the edge of the table. The detective heaved a sigh; he did not particularly _want_ to move, but other parts of his mind (screaming in _alarmalarmalarm_ ) gave him enough of a push to twist his neck so that his face was not pressed down into the couch pillow anymore. He saw the wooden sitting room floor, shoes, and the edge of a crimson cloak.

He blinked.

The gears in his mind started to turn a little quicker as data began to flow in from what he could see of the cloak. Red, obviously, though several shades in the weave of the fabric. Wool— cashmere, to be precise. The inner lining was made of another material ( _pashmina_ suddenly came to mind) covered in a checkered pattern. Each square in turn had intricate designs within the material, and the colors shifted in various hues of red and grey— due to _age_ , not design. The material was weathered and worn, very worn in some places, but still remarkably intact. And while he was certain of its composition, there was… something else about it. Something he could not determine, something _different_.

One thing was for certain: this was no ordinary costume purchased for twenty quid. It was not even one of those pieces of homemade clothing that supposedly fully-functioning adults wore to dress up as their favorite fictional character or historical figure. No, this was an actual piece of clothing that had seen years upon years of usage.

But the stranger in his flat was more than just a cloak. _Stop focusing on it; look at the rest of the picture._ Shoes. Boots that resembled hiking boots, made of leather with rubber soles. The laces seemed to be made up of natural fibers rather than synthetic— hemp or frayed leather, he would need to take a closer look to be certain. Cloth bands wrapped themselves around the boots and were secured in the back. Likely made of hemp, and interestingly enough… yes, they were hand-dyed.

His eyes narrowed as his gaze went higher and his mind began to move faster. That was not the only part of the clothing hand-dyed. The trousers were certainly made of denim— easy enough to determine without touch— but a look at the seams made it clear they were not cranked out in a factory. Furthermore, factories did not use natural dyes, especially not indigo. Indigo dyeing was the most difficult of natural dyes because of how susceptible it was to temperature changes.

He shifted his wandering focus back to the figure and higher went Sherlock's gaze. The man— clearly— wore a long shirt mostly covered by a tunic and secured with a ridiculous number of belts. The belts were unusual, however. The leather was not synthetic and it did not quite look like leather made from the usual cow hide. He would have to inspect it to be certain, and further tests would be needed to determine its exact origin. The rest of the belts' make was easy to determine from sight: wool, brass, and bits of tarnished silver completed the details. The strangest part of the ensemble was the brass trinket hanging from one of them. He briefly went through what he knew of superstitious charms and jewelry and found nothing; he would have to delve deeper into his mind palace at a later time to determine what that thing _was_.

Interesting. He could not be bothered to delve into his mind palace for some time now. Yes, that was it: this was something _interesting_ , and something in his mind observed that his brain was again turning nearly as quickly as it usually did.

His eyes continued to catalogue what he saw. The shirt was likely not a Western design, not if it came from the same place the belts did, and certainly not with that tunic. So the shirt itself — long, high-collared, hand-dyed — was likely a daura or tapālan, or something originating from the greater Tibetan region. The latter would explain the trousers made of denim that were not machine-made jeans. Tapālans were usually paired with tight-fitting suruwā, though he was relatively certain they were not usually made of denim. That was something to look into later.

The outer tunic was more interesting. He would say it was a chuba, but only the ones for women were sleeveless, and it clearly was made for a man. It was perhaps some style of kurta, but that did not ring right, either, especially not with it being made of denim, of all materials. That was annoying; he would have to do further research to seal that gap in his knowledge as soon as possible.

The blue pattern upon the outer tunic gave more away concerning the dyeing. He was uncertain if the symbol made by the dye meant anything— nothing quickly came to mind— but the staining of the blue was unique. With the shades visible, combined with the cut and style of what the man wore, it was likely a dye derived from _Indigofera tinctoria_ as opposed to _Polygonum tinctorum_ or _Isatis tinctoria_ , and better fit his hypotheses concerning the shirt, but he could not be one hundred percent certain without a chemical analysis. Still, he was fairly confident in his quick inspection.

It turned out that the cloak was asymmetrical, as it had a swatch of fabric upon the left shoulder that was not present upon the right. The trim there was intricately decorated with silk embroidery well worth further examination. However, before Sherlock got caught up into the cloak once again, he forced his eyes to the man's hands. A lot could be discovered by someone's hands.

And what hands they were. His eyes involuntarily widened at the sight of the ragged, and in some places hypertrophic scars on the back side of each finger. He quickly looked to the other hand; they were there, too. Clearly they were crushed in some sort of accident, but an accident that left him upright and without any hint of a limp. It was possible that they were caught in some sort of machinery, but both at the same time? Statistically speaking, a car accident was more likely. A car accident that damaged the bonnet of the car and crushed his fingers between the steering wheel and the dashboard, more than likely leaving permanent nerve damage. Unfortunate.

The age of the scars showed that they were healed over, but their nature made it difficult to determine how long ago they were received. With the overall lack of fading, however, it was likely that the damage occurred within the last few years. He could not see his palms and determine anything from there, but the callus upon his right middle finger determined which hand he wrote with. Or once wrote with, at any rate. His hands could certainly be worthy of further study, if only to attempt to determine their surgical history.

Upon his left wrist was, of all things, a wristwatch. He narrowed his eyes. It was a Jaeger-LeCoultre and it was not a counterfeit by any means, but it was not a model he recognized. It looked very similar to the Master Ultra Thin Moon only just released; was this an early prototype for a new model? Even as the question fluttered through his mind, he immediately chastised himself for his stupidity. There was clear wear on the band that spoke of it being worn for years, never mind the cracked face.

 _Custom-made,_ he eventually concluded, though even that answer did not quite sit right with him. Regardless, it spoke of a man who had wealth— or used to, in any case. The wear and damage on the watch told a new picture now, but he seemed to still be connected to some form of influence. His clothing was of a very rich quality, and that was not including the unique cloak. Perhaps he was now connected with someone in the Greater Tibetan area, or someone of wealth in the Indian subcontinent. Or from there, at any rate.

He let his eyes go up the length of the man's sleeves. Cloth bands decorated the forearms of his otherwise seemingly-plain shirt, likely made of wool and hemp. He indulged himself and studied the embroidery on the edge of the cloak again. He received no further information concerning its origin and make beyond what he had already determined, but there was something about it that was absolutely enchanting.

But enough lingering; he finally turned his body to lay on his side and brought his eyes up to meet the bearer of this very odd ensemble of attire.

And he saw himself.

While the scan of the man's body took no more than a few seconds, Sherlock's amazement at the man's face kept him staring upon his visage for about the same amount of time. Still, despite that, his brain was automatically cataloging everything he observed.

The stranger was not his age, but about a decade older. The stark greying at the temples spoke of someone with a lot of stress in their life; it could be due to his hands, or it could be due to a job, though his clothing was frustratingly unhelpful in solving that question. The watch offered more clues; an inheritance was possible, but more likely it was a high-paying job that allowed such luxury at some point in time. His mind flicked to Sebastian at the bank and his then-new watch, but he dismissed it. He needed more data on that front before jumping to conclusions.

Sherlock had never imagined himself with a goatee. Now that he saw it, he full-heartedly believed it was an image he never _needed_ to see.

Besides the unfortunate choice of facial hair, another difference was that the other man's hair was a couple shades lighter than his own and had nowhere near the amount of curliness (despite the amount of product that held most of his long hair back from his forehead). Other than that, the age difference, and minor, insignificant blemishes, they looked all but identical.

They stared at each other wordlessly, the cloaked man clearly just as surprised as Sherlock was over their eerie similarities. After the initial shock— and as the detective was finishing his observations— his doppelganger broke the silence. "Well, that explains it."

Oh God, was he _American_? Of course he was; only his American doppelganger would be idiotic enough to wear such a beard.

Sherlock found his voice. "Who are you?"

The doppelganger looked pleasantly surprised. "Oh, I'm British." He stepped away from the couch to look out the window. "Definitely British. This looks like London."

"It _is_ London," he tried to answer in his usual haughty manner, but his words almost caught in his throat and it completely ruined the effect. An oddly-outfitted man— even if he was bearing his face— would not usually cause such a reaction from the unflappable Sherlock Holmes. However, as he was answering, he caught the cloak moving on its own accord to avoid being caught in the chair beside the desk at the window. He blinked heavily and tried to convince himself that he missed something, but then the man turned and the cloak _did it again_ , and a sudden hypothesis came to mind. _Obvious_ , really, with how he was reacting earlier and how his brain still felt slower than he was used to. With that, he thought of a better question to ask the man.

"What do you want?" he asked, attempting to push himself up into a seated position. This turned out to be a good deal more difficult than he anticipated, only further supporting his hypothesis.

The stranger frowned and looked concerned in a way that, for some reason, reminded him of John.

 _John_. How on earth had he forgotten John's name? Where _was_ John, anyway?

As he managed to get himself into an upright position, the other man said, "My name is Doctor Stephen Strange." _Doctor, that fits— not a lower-paid army doctor like John— watch says once a specialist with a high six figures in his annual salary._ It still did not explain why he was wearing _what_ he was wearing, or why he drugged him in the first place. The lack of immediate answers to his long list of observations was both fascinating and maddening.

The doctor continued, "I do not want anything from you—" He shot him a disbelieving look, and Strange answered, "Really, I don't. I'm here to assist you."

Sherlock replied with a loud, derisive snort. "Assist me? In what _possible_ manner could you assist me?" He straightened his blue dressing gown and his fingers fumbled with the sash as he tried to tie it shut. He quickly became frustrated and gave up on the endeavour. "Or are you saying that you know exactly what I am drugged with without being the perpetrator, _Doctor_?"

His doppelganger's brows rose. "I didn't drug you. No one did." He sighed and looked around the sitting room. "Usually there are more visual proofs to assist me with this," he mumbled to himself.

 _Visual proofs?_ Sherlock blinked his heavy-feeling eyes and maintained his upright position by placing both hands on either side of the couch. This weakness was irritating. His visitor was intriguing in more than one way, but also vexing without John to serve as a buffer. He considered asking this doctor what he thought was wrong with him if he was not drugged, but ultimately decided that was not the most important question. "What are you looking for?" he asked instead as this Strange scanned the room.

Strange's eyes landed on the skull. "Is that skull usually on your mantel?" he asked.

"No, I brought him out in anticipation of your arrival. I thought it fit your motif." He tried to stand. He quickly fell back onto the couch.

His doppelganger shot him a dry look, then further scanned the mantelpiece, coming across the pile of envelopes stabbed through with a letter opener and secured to the wood. There he paused. "Is your name seriously _Sherlock Holmes_?"

Sherlock snorted. "Are you seriously commenting on the oddity of my name, _Doctor Strange_?" Lacking the strength to stand was a bit concerning; he eyed the table surreptitiously for his phone, where he last left it. It was not there.

"My parents did not have much choice on their surname. _Your_ parents had a choice with your first name. Wouldn't your name be considered some form of child cruelty?"

It was rare when Sherlock could not really follow a conversation (outside of ridiculous talks concerning pop culture trivia, but that hardly counted as anything remotely intelligent), but this back and forth with his doppelganger was proving to be… disjointed. "I doubt I had any more teasing for my name than you had for your surname— and what _exactly_ is the point of this line of inquiry? If you are going to continue to simply look around and be completely useless, the least you can do is find my mobile so I may call a _competent_ doctor."

He huffed in reply. "So I am an asshole in other universes, as well." As Sherlock wrapped his head around the logic (or lack of it) in that comment, Strange continued, "Phone calls are useless here. You won't be able to reach anyone." He then looked somewhat apologetic. "I would assist you off the couch, but I can't touch you."

The other man's comments continued to make _absolutely no sense_. Usually he would attest a person's illogical statements as evidence of their stupidity and/or lack of sanity, but neither option rang true for this man. He knew stupidity and he knew insanity, and this Strange displayed traits of neither.

By this point in his life Sherlock was quite adept in identifying individuals who wanted to somehow inconvenience him (for the most part; Jim from IT was a fluke). While the part of his mind that was shouting _danger_ earlier was still there, it was quieter and, more significantly, not directed at this Doctor Strange. All in all, this was turning into something very intriguing. If he did not feel so weak, he might even say it was fun.

Not as fun as a locked room mystery, granted, but still interesting.

Said doctor was still looking around the room, but for what, Sherlock could not even begin to fathom. At the moment he was at the table between the two windows, scanning through the books and papers laying upon it. He paused at one stack of papers and picked them up, quickly shifting through them. His brows rose and he looked at him. "You wrote a paper measuring the coagulation of saliva after death?" He sounded impressed.

Sherlock could not help but inwardly preen. "Such findings are useful to my work."

"What is it that you do?" He set the papers down.

"I'm a consulting detective." Strange froze, though Sherlock could not see what was so odd about his statement to cause such a reaction. He narrowed his eyes at him. "That surprises you, unusually so. Why?"

The doctor did not immediately answer. Rather he took another look at the books on the shelves behind him. Almost all books he had were nonfiction, and they spanned a wide number of topics going into intricate detail about subjects that Google did not necessarily have a quick answer for. The chemistry books in particular were well-worn and all but memorized.

Sherlock watched as he looked away from the shelves and then scanned the papers, books, and other items upon the table once more. He could see some of what was being looked over from where he sat; the majority of the table was still taken up by his work and notes from his latest case, which had involved a number of legitimate hauling companies unwittingly using their lorries to smuggle in a number of illicit goods (and despite what John said in his blog, he did not steal a bus to follow one of the lorries through the city. _He borrowed it._ And the tourists seemed thoroughly entertained by his version of the tour, which is no surprise considering how dull the recorded versions of said tours are). Pictures, fingerprints, maps, and plenty of case notes remained spread out on the table. He meant to file them away at the case's conclusion, but… well, he would get to it eventually.

Other than his case notes, Sherlock could see his ongoing mineral experiment on the shelf just beside the desk, the triggering mechanism of a handgun, an issue of _Handgunner_ , two of his many antique magnifying glasses, and, naturally, more books.

"Do you have, uh, some sort of set of newspaper articles about your work?" asked Strange abruptly.

Sherlock lifted his brows at the question. His inability to predict the doctor's next words was a somewhat nice change of pace. "When I consult with the police, I prefer my name to be left out of the papers. John has been writing a blog, though," he added with a frown.

"John? As in John _Watson_?"

His reactions were only getting stranger— no pun intended. Sherlock studied Doctor Strange for a moment. "Yes. You know of him, but… you do not know him personally." It was certainly possible for the two to have met at a medical conference at some point of time, but something within Strange's demeanour did not sound like a man who was speaking of an acquaintance.

The doctor huffed a laugh. "Yeah, I know of him, you could say." He stared at Sherlock for a moment with an expression the detective could not quite identify— which, considering it was _his_ face, was both equally annoying and troublesome. The closest word he could come up to describe it was _awe_ , but that, again, made absolutely no sense.

"Right," started Strange again, turning once more to the window. "Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. Right. This is going to sound weird to you, Mr Holmes, but indulge me: what year is it?"

 _What_ year _is it?_ The question was so unexpected that he immediately answered without further thought. "2010."

The other nodded at the answer. "Right," he said once more. He slowly exhaled and took a couple steps away from the windows to stand beside the couch again. "I honestly don't think you would believe me if I told you what was happening to you without showing some level of proof, first."

Sherlock raised his brows in disbelief. "Please, hear me out," the doctor continued. "In these sorts of situations usually the person in your position is in no state to assist, but you are remarkably lucid and well, you're Sherlock Holmes, so I think you might be able to help."

He narrowed his eyes. "You know of me," he stated, no question in his voice.

"You won't believe me if I tell you how," said Strange. "Not yet, anyway. But if you can bear with not having answers for just a few more minutes, and if you have the strength to help, your assistance could speed this up a lot. Then I will answer all of your questions, I promise."

The detective narrowed his eyes at the man as he considered what he knew about him. A man— with his face, of all things— who was a doctor, and likely practiced it for some time before something happened to his hands and changed him. This change was sponsored by someone with (given his wear) some sort of prestige and a connection to Tibet, Nepal, or a neighboring region. All of this did not answer who he was now. Finding the answer to that, as well as the answers to all of his cryptic remarks and the appeasement of the cries of _alarm_ within his head?

It was no contest.

"State your case," said Sherlock, and he leaned back again to listen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think of the story so far. I hope to have this fully posted by the end of December- I am currently working on the climax and denouement. You can follow updates about that all on [my tumblr](https://aelaer.tumblr.com/). 
> 
> I do not usually end chapters mid-conversation, but this was getting much longer than I expected (the flipping deduction process was _three pages long_ ) and I thought of something neat for the next scene that will be better with a new chapter.
> 
> The very long more details about things mentioned in the chapter, for those interested:
> 
> A big shout-out to my friend Tal, who, along for beta reading this first chapter for me, also makes the sort of cool clothing I can only dream of making and helped me go through pages and pages of photos to determine the material make of Stephen's outfit when this idea first came into creation about two years ago, now. Without her help, this would not have gotten off the ground. Her assistance, a lot of Googling for traditional wear, and a bit of reading through interviews with costume designer Alexandra Byrne, helped create this final product. If you have a source that states something in the costume is made with something else _that makes sense_ , please let me know!
> 
> This chapter was a bit more difficult than I anticipated because the more I dug into it, the more I found that the film's inspiration was more "Asian" as opposed to specifically Tibetan or Nepali (never mind the dozens of peoples with their unique cultures and their own unique designs that live in those areas of the world). Because of this I tried to find local(ish) references for a timeless place in Kathmandu, which has existed for centuries and ruled by several different cultures over its time. For instance, I changed the Japanese indigo dyeing technique used in the films to something from the Himalayan region, since I don't think Kamar-Taj outsourced their dyeing to something overseas.
> 
> The daura is part of the Nepali traditional male dress. The tapālan and suruwā come from the Newar people's traditional clothing; they are a group of indigenous people from the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal. The chuba (or chupa, I saw both used fairly consistently and I do not know which is considered the 'correct' one) is Tibetan. From what I understand, women's chubas are sleeveless while men's have sleeves. The kurta is an upper garment worn by both men and women and is common in several regions in the Indian subcontinent, including Nepal. This, at least, is according to the random book source on Wikipedia. If anyone happens to know of a sleeveless tunic/vest originating from the Greater Tibetan area or northern Indian subcontinent (or maybe even more eastern Central Asia) that fits what Strange is wearing, holler my way! I will happily rewrite in the name of accuracy.
> 
> I could not find what material the sling rings are made of. If anyone knows, please let me know. For now, I settled on brass.
> 
> Why does Sherlock Holmes know all this random stuff about Asian clothing and fibers— before he has travelled to Asia as we know he does during his hiatus? Well, alongside him being front and center of "knowing random stuff", I could not help but imagine that, while he was writing "a blog on the varying tensile strengths of different natural fibers" (as heard in The Empty Hearse), he was also learning about how those various fibers were applied in clothing throughout the world. With such a multicultural London with people very comfortable in their traditional clothing, a great detective would take the time to categorise such things in his mind palace, especially considering the prominence of several Asian cultures in the city. At least, that's my excuse.
> 
> Stephen's insanely expensive watch, from what I could find, was released in 2013. Sherlock here is at the beginning of Season 2 and not quite there yet. The Jaeger-LeCoultre Master Ultra Thin Moon was released sometime in 2011, but it looks very similar to Stephen's and, for the sake of my sanity, Sherlock's universe released the watch a year or so earlier. :p
> 
> Sherlock "stealing a bus" is actually mentioned in John Watson's blog, in one of the blogs after _The Great Game_ post.
> 
> The "odd disaster in America" regarding molasses is the Great Molasses Flood that happened in Boston in January 1919, sadly killing 21 people and injuring 150 others. Truth is stranger than fiction.
> 
> Finally, Sherlock and I have agreed to disagree about Doctor Strange's magnificent goatee.


	2. Deduction and Deception

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Want to search Sherlock's living room as you read? Head to Google Maps, type in 187 North Gower Street, London, and then drag the little person (for Browse Street View images) from the bottom right corner to the top of the building (not street, but the building's interior) that holds the address. You can now browse around Sherlock's living room and kitchen! (Unfortunately I was only able to figure out how to do this on a computer and could not figure out how to get it working on the phone app).
> 
> Other than the missing violin case (unless I'm just blind) and the small rug under the coffee table, there was one major prop difference on one of the shelves of this rendition, but otherwise everything looks pretty similar to what is around at the start of Season 2, shifts in clutter aside. And yes, I did spend entirely too much time comparing Google Street's version to all the photos I could find.
> 
> Images within the chapter are screenshots from Google Street.

> "So now I walk alone through the nameless reaches of the netherworld, each day weirder than the last."  
> — Stephen Strange, _Doctor Strange Volume 4_ (2015)

" _State your case," said Sherlock, and he leaned back again to listen._

Strange's lips quirked at Sherlock's words for reasons the detective could not fathom, and he answered, "My case, as it were, is simple: I— or we, if you're up for it— need to find an item that does not belong here in… Baker Street?" Sherlock raised a brow at the (again, baffling) question and nodded. It was an accurate enough description. "Thought so," the doctor said, then continued, "Sometimes this item is large and obvious, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. I'm pretty sure, though, that it's here in the living room."

_Living room_. Sherlock had always considered that term an interesting Americanism. "Do you have any more details beyond 'an object that doesn't belong'?" he asked, even as he attempted to get to his feet again. He knew every item in Baker Street. This would be simple— well, simple if he could actually stand. And he was _so_ looking forward to what answers this Doctor Strange had to his many, many questions.

He did hope that he was not proven wrong in his initial assessment of Strange's sanity; if he turned out to be a madman with particularly good acting skills, that would be a disappointment after all this. If it turned out he was just _drugged_ instead of _something different_ , Sherlock would feel a bit insulted. This was especially because, ever since he did formulate his first hypothesis, he still could not recall a moment when and where such a drugging could have occurred.

As he considered various possible scenarios, Strange answered him. "Unfortunately I have no further details. I thought the item was maybe the skull, but…" He trailed off and pressed his lips together as he eyed the shelves. "I don't feel anything, which is unusual. Very unusual. This item is probably going to be small and seem normal, but something will be wrong about it."

"A normal-looking item that is 'wrong'; that is a wretched description and normally I would never consider it." He could not quite keep his balance and leaned forward, pressing both hands against the coffee table. Sherlock huffed his annoyance. "Lucky for you, this is far from normal. Make yourself useful; John's old cane should be in an umbrella stand on the landing."

The doctor snorted, but swept out the door and quickly returned with the walking aid. "Wat— uh, John was injured?" he asked as he handed it over, careful not to make physical contact with him.

Sherlock, of course, noticed this and studied him anew as he took the cane. "Psychosomatic limp treated by giving him a sense of purpose. Why won't you touch me?" he asked as he tried to straighten up once more.

Strange did not seem too disjointed by the sudden pivot in the conversation. "I will explain as soon as we find this item," he promised. The note of concern and sincerity that rang through his tone was not one the detective often found directed his way, as his acquaintances well knew his scathing remarks at such hints of sentiment. However, Sherlock was too busy trying to get to his feet to bother with a retort and let it go for the time being.

The cloaked man turned back and began shuffling through the content on the shelves near the entrance to the kitchen. Sherlock abandoned his first attempt to stand with the cane and instead sat back and concentrated on the doctor. The man first picked up the collection of labeled bullets and visibly frowned before setting the case back down. Strange then began to brush his fingers against each item present, hand lingering on the glass that held the model of a hand, before turning to the much more cluttered bookcase beside the hearth.

As with the first set of shelves, he was careful to brush his fingers against every item, though even Sherlock did not have the foggiest as to what he was hoping to accomplish with such an action. While Doctor Strange examined the bookshelf, the detective turned his attention to the coffee table.

Basket. Fan. Coasters. He couldn't remember where the fan came from, but he was certain it had been there for a while. Mycroft once made a snide remark about its quality.

Ugh. Mycroft. Why did he have to remember his brother's name? He saw no downsides in the selective amnesia concerning _him_.

_Forget Mycroft; you're on a case. Sort of._

Semantics.

Sherlock brought his mind back to focus. Clothespin, clip, ticket — he picked up the ticket. Oh, show John saw with Sarah earlier that week. Boring. Next he turned his attention to the books, picking up the black hardcover volume of _Unexplained 3_. There was nothing 'unexplained' within its pages (which John would consider a missed opportunity for something he considered witty, probably) and he set it aside. Once sitting directly under the book and now fully visible was an orange textbook dedicated to human anatomy; a quick flip through it revealed nothing of interest and he set it down before picking up the paperback next. Said paperback was still a boring, asinine work of fiction that he deleted the plot of after he first read it (for a case, but it was no higher than a five). Under the black and orange textbooks were a small stack of papers that revealed nothing of interest, and that concluded his search of the coffee table.

Time to move on. He frowned at the cane— set to rest against his leg as he searched the table— and picked it up again. One step at a time.

His eyes darted to his right. The dark chest was nearest, but a foot away from the edge of the couch; he would look first through the clutter on top of the chest before attempting to walk the four feet between it and the chair at the desk. The shelves in the corner behind the chest he would worry about later.

This time, he managed to stagger to his feet with the help of the cane and took three very short steps before sitting down at the edge of the coffee table nearest the chest. The amount of energy that it took him to make said very short steps was _excruciating_ ; as Sherlock recovered his breath, he looked over his shoulder to see his guest's progress.

Strange was now beside the other end of the mantelpiece, though he was bending down for some reason— _Oh, yes, the noose and Persian slipper. I suppose those would be considered unusual items in most households._ But most households were dull, bearing shelves filled with generic pictures of family members and pets as opposed to anything remotely interesting.

The doctor straightened and ran his fingers along the various accoutrements upon the mantel: the beetle collection, the magnifying glasses, the letters and letter opener, the brass model of the flesh fly (family Sarcophagidae, one of the more inspired gifts received from a former client who was also an entomology enthusiast), and the replica statue of one of the soldiers of the Terracotta Army in China (a less inspired gift, but certainly not the worst one received from a client).

As Strange moved his attention towards the bookshelf, Sherlock focused again on the chest. Eight books, a thin binder containing several papers and notes from one of his cases, a short stack of papers that contained some folders of case notes as well as several studies and write-ups concerning some of his more recent experiments that he was still finalizing (with some thought of publishing, if only to get Mummy off his back about it; he would never forgive Mycroft for telling her about that potential, and the lazy lump of lard wouldn't do all the tedious submission paperwork for him _after_ mentioning it. Arsehole).

Beyond that, for some inexplicable reason there was a decorative plate of Chinese origin also on the chest. He could not recall— he stretched one arm outward and reached first for that, taking both it and the blue book on top of it in one go. He remained still for a brief moment to regain his balance upon the coffee table, then set the book down and studied the plate with narrowed eyes.

Mass produced. Recently made; no more than a decade old, but artificially weathered to appear older than it actually was. Sherlock narrowed his eyes further; why would this be here? He certainly had no use for such a thing. Was this it, then?

He weighed the plate in both his hands, frowning intensely at it until he heard, "Mr Holmes?" Sherlock looked up at Doctor Strange, who stood still at the bookshelves across the room, though now he was looking at him. "Did you find something?"

"Maybe," he admitted, before adding with a bit more heat, "But even a man of my intellect would be hard-pressed to find an item described with such vagueness. Still, I do not remember this."

Strange stepped forward and held out his hand for the plate. The moment he took it, he shook his head. "No, this isn't it."

Sherlock frowned at him. "You haven't studied it at all."

"I don't need to study it; I just need to touch it."

"That is utterly asinine."

He sighed and placed the plate on the desk. "Just trust me on this. I will answer all your questions once we find _it_ , but that plate is not _it_. You probably just forgot you had it."

Sherlock let out a derisive snort. "Me? Forget an item that exists within my own home? I thought you had _heard_ of me."

Strange rolled his eyes and turned back to return to the shelves by the hearth. "Well, you're not the only one who lives here, right? Maybe John bought it."

He made a face at the thought. "There is absolutely no reason John would purchase a cheap, counterfeit piece of Chinese artwork—"

Something he had marked for 'deletion' within his mind palace came to the forefront of his thoughts. Three weeks after the conclusion of the case that John would call 'The Blind Banker', said doctor went out with some 'mates' on leave from the armed forces. Sherlock had absolutely no desire to engage with these people, especially as they were meeting in a pub for one of their birthdays and were bound to become even more stupid than usual with the copious amounts of alcohol they were sure to imbibe.

Long story short, John had come home quite late that night, pissed as all can be and carrying a wrapped parcel that turned out to be that plate. For reasons Sherlock never quite understood, John had found the plate absolutely hilarious and could not explain his reasoning for his amusement without bursting into laughter. After hauling his flatmate up to his room and setting him on his side so he would not drown in his own vomit, the detective had set the entire night for deletion and shoved it deep into his mind's proverbial Recycle Bin.

Including the damned plate.

"John is an idiot," he huffed, and moodily picked up the book that came with the plate. He could feel Strange's eyes upon him, but he ignored the irritating, walking anomaly and went back to the task at hand.

Book. _The Psychology of Study_ by C.A. Mace. Penguin Books, 1968. Revised Edition. He flipped to the table of contents, then through its pages quickly. Why did he own a book on exam preparation? Was this another one of John's items? Why would _he_ own it?

He tossed the book aside with all the care it deserved (in other words, none) and, still irritated, reached over to glance over the stack of five books in the center of the lid. Two short green paperbacks sat on the top of the pile; they were two books of the same series by Erle Stanley Gardner about a fictional detective that John thought Sherlock might like. He had made a face at the suggestion, but his flatmate did catch him reading one of the books a couple days later. In his defense, he had been between cases. (He would never admit to John that _The Case of the Drowsy Mosquito_ , while the name was just as insipid as John's blog titles, did have very interesting details about the composition of the Californian desert and their mines, even if the mining techniques were now dated. Not likely to be of any use in his work, but still interesting).

He shifted the two paperbacks off the top of the pile to look at the three books below them. Thick textbook, thinner textbook, thin reference book. Nothing of interest. He pushed them aside without further investigation and flipped through the case file underneath for anything different. A quick scan revealed nothing and he huffed in annoyance and tossed the case file to the side.

Sherlock picked up the entire stack consisting of the remaining two books and and short pile of papers to place them upon his lap. Novel— boring. Textbook— boring. Both easily recognized and both dropped on the floor after quick perusal. Each set of notes for his research and his cases quickly followed as he went through the stack of papers, and eventually the small binder with a collection of notes from a larger case landed on top of the discarded pile.

Nothing there. Hopefully he would not have to search the contents inside the chest itself; he would leave that to later if it came to it. Next was the desk.

He grabbed the cane once more and made ready to attempt to walk several feet without falling flat on his face. He managed to stand without losing his balance and went to take a short step forward. However, as he turned his head away from the chest, the gloss of a makeshift bookmark in one of the green mystery novella paperbacks he had shoved aside in his bout of ire caught in the sunlight, causing Sherlock to pause. Why, he could not say, but that it caught his eye at all was telling. With one hand firmly on the cane, he carefully reached down with his other hand and brought the book up, stubbornly keeping to his feet with what strength he had as he flipped to the marked page.

A brief scan showed nothing of note on the page. The bookmark, however…

It was not a bookmark at all, but a business card. In the bottom left corner was the only color on the card in the form of the blue logo of the NHS Trust, and at the top right was the black and white coat of arms of St Bartholomew's hospital. Written on the card in a simple, generic sans-serif font was:

JIM SCOTT  
 _Senior Information Analyst_

In the bottom-left corner was a Bart's email address and phone number with an extension, as well as the address for the hospital itself. He flipped the card over; written there was a personal mobile number.

Sherlock frowned. He forgot he had this. He wondered when, once this business was said and done and he was feeling bored again, if the mobile number would actually work.

Could be worth giving it a shot, though knowing John, he would protest against this. Sherlock understood why, of course, but Moriarty had made no contact and it had been _weeks_ since the bombing case. Surely John would understand that he needed to make progress—

He blinked as a memory slammed into the forefront of his mind. He saw himself in the lab at St Bart's sitting in front of a microscope and Carl Powers' trainers.

_As he was stating off everything he knew about the owner of the shoes, he came to a sudden epiphany. "Carl Powers."_

_John looked towards him. "Sorry, who?"_

" _Carl Powers, John," he muttered._

_John's brow furrowed at the name. "What is it?"_

_Sherlock replied, "It's where I began." He stood up and quickly bagged the shoes before heading to the lab door. Molly would later admonish him for not clearing his station, though the only reason he remembered that was because John never let him forget it._

_But at this time, John only sighed and said, "Well, that's progress then, I suppose." He followed after him._

_Left behind at the microscope was Jim from IT's business card._

Sherlock came back to the present and blinked. "This is it," he said, with all the confidence he usually bore at a successful conclusion.

Strange turned around and eyed the business card with a dubious expression. "Really? I don't sense anything…" He stepped forward and held his hand out. Sherlock handed it to him, this time taking a moment to study his palms as he did so. The amount of scarring there was just as significant as the other side of his hand, and this close he could see the signs of nerve damage from the slight quivering as he took the card.

The moment he touched it, Strange's expression completely shifted. "Oh, now I sense it. Wow. This is unusually strong— but considering it's up against the mind of _Sherlock Holmes_ , it makes sense."

Before he could ask what in God's name he was babbling about (he had found it, he wanted answers _now_ ), the doctor said, "Best sit down; this might be a lot to take in."

Normally he would not, but keeping his balance was becoming difficult and he wanted his full concentration upon Doctor Strange's words. And so he walked two steps back to the nearest end of the couch, sat down, and looked at the man impatiently.

Strange set the card down upon the clear spot of the coffee table. He then held his middle and ring fingers down with his thumbs and made a series of hand gestures. As he gestured, bright orange sparks formed in the air his fingers traced.

Sherlock, at times, would compare his mind to a computer and (on much rarer occasions) would explain how his mind worked with computer analogies. It was the simplest way to describe his ability to remove unnecessary information from his mind palace to John, at any rate. Were he to keep to the computer analogy now, he would say that the moment the sparks began to form in the air was the moment that his brain experienced the infamous Blue Screen of Death.

His brain 'rebooted' within a couple seconds. In the meanwhile, his jaw had dropped, but he was well beyond the point of caring what he looked like as his wide eyes took in what had once been in the realm of impossibility. Sherlock's brain began to whirl a million miles a minute as it went through every known science and scientific theory that could explain what he was seeing. In some ways, it felt as if the floor of his mind palace had collapsed and he was falling.

The drugged theory was becoming a nice one again.

He could only stare as Strange finished his bright drawing in the air, the design only taking a few seconds; he had formed a bright diamond outlined in runes that he did not recognize and filled with an intricate, symmetrical pattern of circles, squares, and lines that he immediately committed to memory. Drawing complete, he pushed his hands down towards the floor. His creation went down with the motion, only it went down towards the business card until it fell upon it.

And the card, for lack of a better term, shuddered and began to contort.

However, Sherlock's gaze swiftly moved away from the card to the rest of his surroundings as he sensed more than felt some sort of shift. His eyes widened even further as his sitting room shimmered and began to transform just as the card was, only on a much wider scale. His books and trinkets started dissolving or twisting into new shapes and new materials; the brown wood of the shelves and mantelpiece started to grey and roughen with jagged edges and cracked faces. His eyes darted to the windows, which were shrinking until they were only two feet high but a good eight feet off the ground. The glass panes were gone and replaced with jagged branches covered in thick thorns. If he knew the plant they belonged to, it was not currently coming to mind. The furniture was completely gone, either dissolved away or replaced by jagged, rocky shapes that bore a very minimal resemblance to what they stood for.

As Sherlock watched their surroundings change in what he would only admit to himself was horror, Strange viewed it all with the complacency of a man used to such things. When the shifting stopped, the doctor turned his gaze back to him and his expression darkened. "Here, let me help you out of those."

_Out of…?_ Sherlock looked down at himself. He was so distracted by the utter impossibilities around him that he had failed to note the changes happening right beside him. He was still wearing his pajamas and silk dressing gown, but instead of sitting on his couch, he was on a bed of thick, purple lichen that, disturbingly, he could not begin to name.

Even more disturbing though was the sudden existence of chains upon him. A length of chain appeared in his line of sight below his chin, and with its sighting he suddenly felt a heavy collar upon his neck. The chain continued downward until it connected to a pair of lengths that ended at a manacle for each hand. Further down it went to another pair of shackles for his ankles. All were secured with a garish padlock at a central point within the maze of chainlinks. And just beyond that, upon the slab of rock that used to be his coffee table, a key sat in the location where Jim Scott's business card once was.

Strange picked up the key and inserted it into the padlock. Once he twisted it, all of his restraints as well as the key disintegrated.

He immediately jumped to his feet, and the only positive thing about all this was that he was suddenly back to his full strength. The detective backed away from the other man and found himself in the center of the room, standing on the threshold of where his kitchen once stood. A part of his mind noted that his respiratory system was thrumming much faster than usual as Sherlock was overwhelmed by the _wrongness_ of everything around him.

Doctor Strange remained where he was, holding up both palms placatingly. "Take a deep breath and exhale slowly through your nose." And he was lecturing him on how to calm his breathing, how _irritating_.

"I'm not panicking," Sherlock snapped, breathing still heavy. In lieu of listening to his advice, he instead began to pace. He needed to _think_.

The other man let him be as he moved back and forth, back and forth on the now-rocky floor of what was once wood and _it didn't make any sense_. This was not drugs; he _knew_ drugs, tried them all, and this was nothing, _nothing_ like anything he had ever experienced in his life.

Eventually he calmed down enough to stop pacing, and he spun to glare at his companion, who was entirely too stoic for all of this. "Who are you? What is this?"

"I'm still Doctor Strange," he answered, kindly, and _God_ that was _just loathsome_. "But I'm also a sorcerer. And you, Mr Holmes, are dreaming."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Andrew Scott was simply credited as 'Jim' in 'The Great Game' so… I just gave Jim from IT the actor's surname. The exact position was not stated and is also fictional, but very much exists as part of the wider NHS support team (and they are hiring, techy British readers!).
> 
> While I was quite fortunate to be able to visit St Barts last year (and it's very neat, small free museum outlining the history of the hospital and medicine in the UK— highly recommend!), I did not have the foresight at the time to pick up any business cards held by museum staff, and naturally there was no guarantee they would look like the rest of the hospital's cards. Google was quite unhelpful in this regard, so the business card design is entirely fictitious. I am using my art degree to go to new heights.
> 
> The number listed is the very real primary number for St Barts Hospital (as well as Mile End and The Royal London), and the extension used is its founding year. The email is fictitious, but knowing my luck, a real Jim Scott works there, so leave the address alone please. He is very unlikely to be a handsome criminal mastermind. Also please do not attempt to call the number. If it happens to be a way to reach a real extension, some poor sod will be very confused and I will feel very bad.
> 
> I could not get enough detail on the little fly statue to really tell what specific fly it was, but I thought that Sherlock would most like a statue of a flesh fly. Its origin story, as well as all the stories of the other items mentioned in detail in this chapter, are of my own creation.
> 
> Writing about the books was quite fun and all were part of the Baker Street set as seen on Google maps; I own two of the books burnt in Season 4 (purchased in auction at two separate Sherlocked conventions) and one day hope to write why Sherlock owned them in the first place, as both are fiction (and one is by Tolkien, my favorite author. It's a great crossover of two of my favorite fandoms).


	3. Vanishing Underground

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was almost called 'Holy exposition, Batman!', but, well, wrong universe. Hopefully the ridiculously large chunk of exposition is entertaining enough with breaks for snark and banter in between the two. Some may even find the comic book science interesting!
> 
> A note for well-read comic book fans: For the sake of this story to work, I had to swerve away from what has been established by the Powers That Be at Marvel and alter the structure of how different dimensions work. From what I understand, usually each universe (or reality) has its own set of many dimensions connected to that one reality. In this story, dimensions are treated as being "above" universes/realities in the hierarchy. So unlike in the comics where there may be many different versions of the Dream Dimension (and its denizens), in this story there is only one Dream Dimension that can touch upon all universes/realities.
> 
> There are definitely other changes, and for those interested in reading such things, they are listed in the end notes of the chapter (along with explanations for other things).
> 
> The art in this chapter was heavily inspired by some of the crazy color schemes and partially inspired by what little glimpses of landscape are shown in the pre-21st century Doctor Strange comic books. Along with Ditko's art, the aesthetics (color in particular) were inspired by _Doctor Strange: Sorcerer Supreme Vol 3_ (1992), issues #38 to #40 (which, as someone who did not grow up with comic books, are really, really odd and somewhat cheesy but are in other ways rather entertaining, especially #40). The more rocky landscape was inspired by the more modern comic _Blood in the Aether_ (2016). The medium is prismacolor pencils, though unfortunately the images I had saved as reference for the piece I lost when I had to reformat my laptop.

> "How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, _however improbable_ , must be the truth?" — Sherlock Holmes, _The Sign of the Four_ (1890)

Sherlock wanted to sit. No— he wanted to lie down, but he was going nowhere near that as-of-yet-unidentified bed of lichen right now, so sitting remained the only viable option. He ended up settling upon a boulder placed where his chair once sat.

He swallowed and stared at Doctor Strange. "Explain," he said, managing to keep his voice even and imperious despite his mind being near the brink of collapse.

The doctor sat on the rock that stood for his coffee table. "You are currently asleep. I just broke the enchantment that kept you within the dream— or, well, nightmare."

Sherlock's instinctive reply would have been a derisive look, but he had just watched his sitting room walls melt into an entirely different material. He was far gone from the scientific, rational reality he was familiar with (and thus, the easy responses that came with them).

So. Different approach.

"This does not feel like a dream," he answered.

Strange shook his head. "It wasn't a normal dream. Right now, it would perhaps be more appropriate to say that you _were_ dreaming, and now your spirit is currently stuck in this dimension."

Sherlock blinked. "Beg pardon? _Dimension_?"

Strange grimaced apologetically. "Let me start from the beginning. Are you familiar with the idea of the multiverse?"

He made a face. "Vaguely. Physics is not my area of study."

"Usually people know of it from science fiction," Strange answered somewhat bemusedly, "but yes, there are several theories within physics that examine the idea of the multiverse. I do not know physics well enough to say which theory is right, but… well, it exists."

He would usually have some sort of retort ready at such a statement, but his mind palace had been temporarily pulverized by the complete shift in his entire basis of reality. Sherlock stared at the doctor— _sorcerer?_ — with a furrowed brow while in the background his brain began to shift building blocks and, in the meanwhile, scoured for any fragments of his knowledge of physics to try and rebuild his understanding of the world.

As he internally rebuilt and searched, he kept one active part of his mind on Strange, who continued his explanation. "The multiverse is very real. Within the confines of reality are many universes; the full number remains uncounted, but it is certainly within the thousands, if not greater. It's very possible that the number is infinite. Some of these universes are almost identical in being, such as, I suspect, yours and mine. Others may have our world in it, but some sort of historical event, or series of events, changed it so drastically that it's a completely different world. The example that comes to most minds is Germany winning World War II, though funnily enough, I have yet to run into that scenario." He paused and looked at Sherlock. "Germany didn't win World War II in your world, right?"

His mind temporarily halted in its reconstruction at the statement. "Don't be absurd," Sherlock retorted.

The other man rolled his eyes. "It's a legitimate question. Anyway, alongside the many variations of universes that hold our Earth within them, there are also universes that are nothing like ours, with completely different solar systems and different populated worlds with countries, peoples, and creatures that do not exist anywhere in our universe. Despite these differences, however, these foreign lands are still in physical realms.

"Apart from these are places we call 'dimensions'. They exist beyond these normal physical universes and usually exist with completely different physics. For instance, there are several dimensions that exist on what is known as the astral plane. Are you familiar with the concept of the astral body?"

He diverted the part of his mind locating all of his knowledge of physics to quickly find reference to that phrase instead, and when he found what he was looking for, Sherlock frowned. "Enough so to dismiss it as superstitious nonsense created by people with limited intelligence," was his immediate, instinctive reply. He then paused, looked around, and added a bit grudgingly, "Or so I would have said twenty minutes ago." He hissed his annoyance between his teeth and massaged his temples with both hands. "I am having to— to reconstruct my entire understanding of physics, and now you speak of concepts that have not even entertained a legitimate scientific theory! How is it _possible_ that these new-age spiritualists knew of something that the best minds in science had no evidence for?" Frustrated, he leapt to his feet and began to pace once more, on occasion running a hand through his hair.

Sherlock could feel Strange's eyes upon him, though he himself was not looking towards the man. "Some people have an innate sense for things beyond the physical," he answered. "I am still working on the scientific side of it, myself, but for what it's worth, my world has no scientific proof of the astral plane's existence; its reality remains known to very few, at least on Earth." Before Sherlock could begin to truly process the implications of _that_ comment, Strange continued, "Anyway, this place is one of the dimensions entirely within the astral plane. Neither of our physical bodies are here presently, but our souls, if you like, are."

"And where exactly is _here_?" he snapped, stopping his pacing to spin about and glare at Strange once more.

The doctor did not seem bothered by his short temper. "This place is known as the Dream Dimension. Every human being across the multiverse opens their mind to this dimension when they dream— when they enter REM sleep, to be precise. It is theorized that it's humanity's dreams that give it a form to begin with," he added, his tone taking on a thoughtful lilt.

He ran a hand through his hair again. _Unbelievable._ "You speak of _theories_ and you call yourself a— a _sorcerer_?"

Strange rose from his sitting position. "I _am_ a doctor. I had to take OChem and physics classes to get there. You can think of magic as a mostly-unstudied field of physics, if you'd like."

Sherlock narrowed his eyes at him. "Doctor of what?"

"Medicine." Ah, good, at least he was not wrong there. "I was a neurosurgeon."

His mind briefly left its focus upon his incredibly surreal situation to concentrate instead on Strange's hands. "Car accident?"

Strange's smile was fleeting and did not reach his eyes. "Yeah. Not surprised you figured that out." He turned away from him and began to head towards the opening in the cavern, located about where the sitting room door used to be. Beyond it was a narrow area that quickly sloped out of sight, similar in size and form to the stairwell in Baker Street.

"Wait— where are you going?" He had only just finished stabilizing his mind palace's new room where information concerning advanced physics and the multiverse resided, and his doppelganger was leaving him? That was completely unacceptable, not with all the knowledge he held that Sherlock needed to _know_.

The sorcerer stopped at the opening and looked over his shoulder. " _We_ are going to find a route to get you back to the physical realm. I assume you don't want to be here forever."

"Of course not," Sherlock scoffed. "But I have several more questions before I can even consider leaving."

"It will have to be while we walk. We shouldn't remain here much longer, or we may be noticed. Come along, Mr Holmes." With that, he turned and began down the narrow cavern path.

Sherlock huffed in frustration and quickly followed him, ignoring the feeling of the rocky gravel beneath his heels (minor annoyance, superficial pain— _not even physically real_ — not important). If Strange was going to rush him out of here, he would simply ask his questions in a more efficient manner. Now that the 'what' was answered (multiverse, astral body, Dream Dimension), they could get to the 'how'.

As they turned the first bend down the narrow path, Sherlock saw that there was no source of light for the path beyond them. He glanced at Strange, who had stopped at the edge of darkness; he could make out a soft frown on his features. "Oh, right," said the doctor, and he brought his hands together, then folded his fingers quickly in intricate ways that Sherlock could not follow in the dim lighting. Within a couple seconds, a bright white light sprung in between Strange's hands; it was bright enough to create a circle of light with a radius of about three meters. He held the light aloft with his left hand as he began to descend. "Normally the astral form has a form of night vision," he said, "but this darkness is not wholly natural."

"Natural as opposed to the rest of this so-called dimension?" he retorted as he followed after, careful to keep close enough to remain within the radius of the light.

"It's natural in its own way," he answered. "Physics is not entirely the same here as it is in physical realms, but it still has its own set of rules."

Rules were good; this led back to the question of 'how' and he came back to his original thought process. "Explain the mechanics of this 'multiverse'," he said as continued to descend after him, keeping an eye on his footing on the rocky, steep ground. In the corner of his eye, he caught a flash of strange movement; there was no wind in the cave, so how did the cloak—

"I told you already, I don't know the details. I am not a physicist and I couldn't give you the science behind the multiverse, other than point at some theories in quantum physics or the string theory or something similar."

Sherlock rolled his eyes at the answer. They turned another bend and the path before them remained wholly dark without Strange's unexplainable light source. From what he could see, the terrain remained steep and continued to descend for as far as the light went, though the rockface itself remained a dull grey. To his annoyance, he could not be one hundred percent certain about its composition, though it mostly reminded him of basalt (which, while unusual considering how deep they seemed to be, was not unheard of in the real world).

He turned his attention back on the doctor as they moved onward. If he could not answer the 'how'... "That answer is completely useless to me. If you haven't had the forethought to research the mechanics of a phenomenon a large portion of the scientific community would be scrambling to have knowledge about, then do at least tell me you know _something_ about the 'why' of this situation." He briefly paused to pick a small stone out of his heel.

Strange kept facing forward, but the detective heard the annoyance in his tone. "I don't remember you being this much of an asshole in high school." What the bloody blazes was he going on about? He narrowed his eyes and stared at the back of the doctor's head, but the older man continued onward with an answer to his blunt inquiry. "As I said, we're in the Dream Dimension, and it is populated by every—"

"—dreaming human being in the multiverse; I do have a memory span greater than that of a goldfish."

"Do you want me to answer or not?" Strange stopped and turned to look at him, a frown crossed over his features. Sherlock matched the expression and remained silent. The doctor eventually blinked and shook his head. "Seeing my face on another person is taking time getting used to. Anyway." He turned around and started down the cavern tunnel once more. "The Dream Dimension is not just home to the subconscious collective of humanity. There are beings that call this dimension their home. Most are fairly harmless, but, well…"

"There's always an exception," Sherlock added, tone very dry.

Strange snorted softly. "Yeah, that's one way of putting it. As I said, most of these beings are fairly harmless, but there is one in particular that is a powerful demonic entity."

Sherlock made a face. "I don't believe in demons."

"Neither did I." He looked over his shoulder with a wry smile. "But here we are."

His grimace only deepened at the answer. Wonderful; another thing to completely re-sort in his mind palace. But he removed himself from that thought for now.

The path had finally begun to level out, which allowed Sherlock to spend less time looking at his footing and more time to study the cavern walls as they passed through, though the nature of their passing left little room for in-depth study. He took a moment to veer to the side and brush his fingers against the wall to better determine its hardness. Definitely metamorphic or igneous in nature by touch alone, but it certainly appeared to be basalt. Perhaps this part of the cavern was at one point in time less deep than it was now.

 _Are you really trying to analyse the composition of the rock when you just watched it mold from the items within your sitting room?_ mocked a small voice in his head. He bit back the urge to sigh and moved away from the wall as the cavern path began to widen. The path ahead still remained pitch black beyond their circle of light. "Go on," he said.

"In this specific dimension there is a realm within it known as Nightmare World."

"How terribly creative."

"It gets better. This realm is ruled by said powerful demonic entity. Whatever his original name once was is unknown, but nowadays he is known as Nightmare."

He could not help but roll his eyes. " _Nightmare?_ Really?"

He heard the amusement in Strange's voice as he answered, "When I am dealing with a Dormammu one week and a Shuma-Gorath the next, sometimes such simplicity is nice." He shook his head. "Unfortunately Nightmare is anything but 'nice' when he decides to be a pest. On a good day he is content to feed off the natural energy produced by the dreams of humanity across the multiverse, but sometimes he gets greedy. There is more energy in bad dreams— and he finds them more amusing— so it is not unusual for him to encourage them. Usually that's not a problem, as he will bother a small group of people for a single night and move onto another set.

"However, on rare occasion he takes a special disliking— or liking, God knows— to an individual and specifically feeds on their energies night after night after night to the point that I notice it." Sherlock opened his mouth to ask _how_ such a thing was noticeable, but the doctor was quick in continuing his story. "Or he'll decide that because the Cubs won the World Series, everyone in Cleveland gets to suffer for it with his special brand of nightmares. Those are the sort of events where I intervene."

He considered asking about the importance of this World Series before dismissing it as irrelevant. He was quickly proven correct when Strange spoke on. "The last time I encountered him, my colleague and I convinced him that keeping the entire island of Bora Bora in nightmares every evening was not conducive to a working relationship. He did not take too kindly to that."

He then paused and turned to shoot him a repentant look. "I am not surprised he still holds a grudge, but I was not expecting it to manifest in this way. I fear you were targeted because of your resemblance to me, Mr Holmes. Nightmare must have taken great delight in finding my doppelganger and taking out his frustrations on him— on you." Strange looked genuinely apologetic, which only baffled Sherlock.

"It's hardly your fault that we look as similar as we do— do you know _why_ we do?"

"I'm afraid not. It wouldn't be unexpected to find another Stephen Strange in a universe different from mine with my features, but an entirely different person with a background like yours? I have not heard of such a thing, but I'll certainly look into it once we're out of here."

Sherlock opened his mouth to ask for clarification on the background comment, but he stepped again on another small stone and paused to swipe it off his sole. This was getting tiresome.

A sudden thought came to him, and his trail of questions unexpectedly pivoted as he looked down at his bare feet with a frown.

"If this isn't my physical body," he started, "then why do I feel the stones beneath my feet?"

Strange paused his steps and turned to look at him. "The sensory inputs from within the astral plane trick your brain as if it were your physical body feeling, seeing, and hearing everything around us. While it does not actually physically affect you, the brain cannot tell the difference." Sherlock looked unconvinced, and the other man smirked. "Not even _your_ brain. Because of this, it's possible to die here from some physical causes, particularly the ones that cut off oxygen to the brain, as it cannot tell the difference between the astral body and physical body. Someone's mind, their conscious, has a direct connection to the physical form. If it's not doing well here, it will affect the body's health in the physical realm."

"Still," Sherlock argued, "this is not real. My body is not physically present."

"It is real," he retorted. "It's just a visual manifestation of the conscious. Souls, if you want to be spiritual."

"I don't," he said back. "You're missing my point. As I am not here, my _clothing_ is not here either. So why am I dressed in my pajamas?"

Strange's eyes lit up in understanding. "Ah, that would be Nightmare's influence. To make the illusion surrounding your nightmare work to its ultimate potential, he chose from your memory whatever you were wearing in a similar situation, along with all of your surroundings and their details. And there he imprisoned you and created a draining, never-ending buffet from your life's energy."

"But he no longer has influence over me and my mind," Sherlock reaffirmed. The doctor nodded, and he continued, "Therefore, I am in control of my own thoughts and conscious; theoretically, if I am in control, I should be able to look however I please."

"Well, I think your conscious has a permanent imprint of your general likeness upon it, but… yeah, I suppose you could change your clothing. Get some shoes on, at least."

Sherlock gave him an unamused look. "And how, precisely, do I do so? This… _business_ is hardly my area."

His brow furrowed. "I'm not sure; I'm not asleep. I've never entered the Dream Dimension asleep— at least, not after I became a sorcerer." He paused for a moment in thought. "Controlling dreams is often matters of willpower, so… it may just be a matter of will."

"Will," he repeated duly.

Strange shrugged. "Can't hurt to try."

He sighed. "Fine." Though the thought process was unnatural and, before this experience, would have been dismissed as utterly idiotic, Sherlock closed his eyes and imagined himself in one of his tailored suits and shod with his ever-present Belstaff coat.

He had hardly shut his eyes when Strange said, "That was quick," and Sherlock quickly opened them again. He did not need to look at himself; even as he lifted his lids, he felt the comfortable and very familiar weight of his coat. Still, he looked down and the corners of his lips twisted upward at the sight of his coat, suit, and loafers.

"You clean up nicely, Mr Holmes."

"Sherlock." At Strange's quirked brow, he added, "We are currently travelling in a cavern in another dimension where I made my clothes suddenly manifest upon my person. I don't believe formalities are necessary at this point."

He canted his head to the side, then nodded. "Fair enough. Call me Stephen, then."

Stephen. A rather ordinary name for a completely unordinary man. Sort of like John in that regard. He found that comparison pleasing (though, of course, he was nowhere near John's levels of tolerance for his person, though his usefulness seemed on par, albeit in completely different ways).

"Are you sure you want to wear those?" Sherlock drew himself out of his thoughts and looked down to where Strange— Stephen— gestured to his Italian loafers.

"I would not have imagined them if I didn't."

"Suit yourself." With that, he turned around and started again down the path.

Sherlock deftly followed him, making better progress in shoes well used to traversing the older and rougher streets about London. A relatively smooth cavern path was well within his capabilities. Besides, could he even develop blisters in a realm like this? If he did, could he not just will them away?

Those were questions for later. For now, he had more pressing inquiries. "You have said why he targeted me, but failed to explain the mechanics of what precisely he was doing to me beyond 'feeding on my energy'. I haven't had any nightmares in the last few evenings and you said nothing of a large epidemic within London, so what was different?"

The path began to slope downward again with an incline subtle enough to make little difference in his balance. They came to a fork in the path with two offshoots; Stephen did not answer until he looked down both paths before continuing down the right fork. "Nightmare had you trapped within a scenario that, subconsciously, is one of your worst fears." He peered over his shoulder at him. "I admit I was expecting something a bit more… chaotic."

Sherlock pressed his lips together and refused to answer. No one— not even Mycroft— understood the gnawing pain of utter boredom, of his mind going completely stagnant. He did not expect his new acquaintance to, either.

Stephen caught on quickly enough that an explanation was not forthcoming and turned back to face the path. "While you were trapped within the nightmare, he was draining upon your energy— your life force, so to speak. Don't ask me how it works from a scientific perspective because I have not yet found the answer.

"The problem with your scenario was the nature of the trap. Your average dreamer is not trapped in a room deep within the foundations of the Dimension. This path we are travelling now? This indicates just how long he planned to feed on you. This type of trap would greatly weaken any Master of the Mystic Arts; for someone like yourself, not at all versed in the ways of magic? No matter how great your will, the continuous drain upon your spirit would have eventually killed you."

He nearly stumbled upon an uneven bit of ground at his words, but just managed to recover his balance. Sherlock pressed his lips together and let the silence sit for a moment as he considered where to take his line of questioning at that admittedly unexpected revelation. As they walked, they came upon another fork in the path not a minute after the first one and Stephen again peered down both ways, then started down the left path.

As they left the fork behind, he said, "That answers why I felt so weak, though your lack of answers regarding 'how' are incredibly irritating." Stephen scoffed softly at the comment, but Sherlock pressed on. "Was it my restraints that caused this transfer of energy?"

"Oh no," he said, voice dry. "Those were entirely aesthetic; I imagine it amused him to create such a construct for one who looks so similar to me. Melodramatic prick."

Sherlock made a face at the answer and slightly pivoted his line of questioning. "Was it this energy transfer that made you unwilling to touch me?"

Stephen shot him an impressed look over his shoulder. "Yes. Were I to have touched you while he was directly feeding upon you, he would have recognized my energy signature and be immediately alerted to my presence. Now that the key to the nightmare is destroyed and the bond broken, it's not an issue."

"Won't he notice that this so-called bond has been broken?"

"Not immediately. He tends to feed on some thousands across the multiverse at a time— usually just for a few Earth hours per individual— so he should not note your breaking free until, hopefully, you're out of here."

They rounded another bend and the first bit of natural light (so to speak) since they left the cell broke through a high opening in the rock wall.

The sky was green.

Of course it was green.

Sherlock huffed softly to himself. Stephen looked over his shoulder at him, but he did not bother to answer his silent question. He still had several more of his own.

"What should I expect of this so-called Nightmare, should we come across him?"

"Well, firstly, I am really counting on us to _not_ run into him. I usually have my colleague here with me to help deal with Nightmare, but he is putting out fires elsewhere in the multiverse and this could not wait."

"Couldn't it? You said he could have eventually killed me, not that he was near killing me."

He shook his head. "I felt him shifting a great force of energy when he snatched and imprisoned your spirit. Usually one person would not have caused such an impact, so well done there; your subconscious clearly put up a fight. However, it took quite some time to determine that it was he who was doing the power shifting as opposed to another great demonic entity, and then, of course, I had to take my time to actually find the general area of the dimension you were imprisoned within. It's a big dimension. By the time that was all done, enough time had passed that I couldn't wait for Wong any further."

"Your colleague, I presume." Stephen nodded. "Are you not able to best Nightmare by yourself?"

The doctor bristled a bit. "I can," he retorted quickly. "He's nothing compared to others. Dormammu could eat him for breakfast any day of the week." The path bent again, but other than a slight incline that went for a few meters, it kept relatively even. Another small crack above them in the ceiling some twenty meters ahead revealed a minty green sky, but it was too thin to light much but a tiny patch of rock. He noticed that the small bit of natural lighting revealed a change in the composition of the rock; it was less grey and taking on tints of brown, but all other detail was lost in the distance.

"However," he continued, "ever since the battle after the Decimation we do our best to keep in pairs. There are few of us Masters left, but there are enough adept apprentices to make do for all issues upon Earth. Only the Masters tend to go into other dimensions, and if need calls for it, as it did now, we can go on our own. I'd just rather not deal with Nightmare."

Sherlock narrowed his eyes and stared at the back of his head. His aloof guard had dropped there momentarily at the end, and what sounded like lingering exhaustion had touched his last words. "Long day?" he casually asked.

Stephen grunted in confirmation. "The mind maggot infestation in San Francisco took eight hours and the help of five apprentices to clear out. Then I had to find you, of course."

"Not much time for rest." He did his best not to sound too judgemental.

The doctor seemed to hear it, anyway, and straightened his posture. "The shifts in med school were worse. Anyway, you wanted to know more about Nightmare, yes?" He did not allow Sherlock to answer and plowed on ahead. "As I said, he's an immortal demon and with that comes the ability to shift his shape as he wants. In earlier centuries, when stalking whatever poor unfortunate human caught his attention, he would often take on some sort of hybrid of the most popular demonic beings. By the 1700s he managed a rather impressive hybrid of Satan, Baigujing, and Kali — for some reason he did not draw much from the Americas or Africa. I think many of the indigenous peoples on those continents figured out a method to block him, similar to what us sorcerers know.

"When it comes to a form he prefers when he is in a good mood, he has grey hair— can be light or dark— pallid-looking skin, and his eyes are usually glowing though the color seems to vary like the world's most unpredictable mood ring. Tall, lanky, and for reasons beyond my understanding, he likes green jumpsuits."

Sherlock paused. "Green jumpsuits."

"Yep. If we're unfortunate enough to come across him, though, I doubt he'll be wearing that appearance."

"Why?"

Stephen smirked. "The last time we crossed paths, we may have traded words that might have involved me insulting his tailor." He scanned the horizon. "Anyway, he's finally entered the modern era and has started experimenting with more grotesque horror movie villains. We ended that encounter with him shifting into something more Freddy Krueger than anything."

Sherlock thought about asking what Freddy Krueger looked like, but decided that it was ultimately irrelevant. If some sort of creature appeared in this bewildering environment, Strange would surely alert him to its nature.

They passed under the crack in the ceiling and he peered upward to see if he could see anything but sky beyond it; no such luck. Another bend in the pathway appeared and the ground began to slope more steeply downward once more.

"Oh, and he has a horse," Stephen added.

Sherlock blinked. "Why would a demonic entity need a horse?"

"No idea. I figure he fancies himself the fifth rider of the apocalypse. It's more of a horse skeleton with the skin still intact than an actual horse, mind you, but he was riding it the last time I was here."

The cavern path continued its steep slope for another ten meters before coming to another bend. Sherlock squinted; it was difficult to tell with Stephen's bright light source, but it seemed that the area beside the bend in the path was lit by another faint source. He paused his questioning for a minute to focus upon his surroundings.

They came to the bend, and revealed was a half-lit cavern that held bright natural light at its far end, though the entrance itself was concealed by one last turn in the path. The ground evened out once more and the light in Stephen's hand faded as they stepped closer to the natural light.

The two came to the final turn and Sherlock found his steps slow to a stop as he took in the scene before him.

At some point within their journey through the mountain, the rock type had changed to a softer, tan sandstone that easily chipped with enough pressure from his fingers. Various shades of tan and brown made up the composition of the stone illuminated by the light streaming through the cave.

Beyond its mouth was a rocky landscape unlike anything the detective had ever seen before. The pale sandstone path leading from the cave hugged a series of smooth, vertical rock pillars that shone gold in the light and cast dark brown shadows tinged purple. The path made its way to a bend that led two directions. To the left, a staircase carved into the rocky face ran upward until it reached the top of the hill and fell out of sight. At the top beside the staircase there looked to be the remains of a ruin carved from the same material as the hill it stood upon. To the right was a short set of stairs leading to a narrow bridge that continued onward for several meters before going out of sight behind another set of several of the vertical rock pillars.

Beyond the structures was a gaping chasm that fell into a darkness Sherlock could not see an end to. Above the chasm was a series of floating rock structures, some bearing the remains of staircases and pillars that had long since fallen into ruin. Far into the distance this stony landscape continued until it met the horizon of the sky. The sky itself was largely green, but tinged with a myriad of blues and yellows that mimicked the structure of clouds but melted more seamlessly with the sky around it.

Sherlock could not say how long he stood at the mouth of the cavern, taking in the utterly alien landscape before him. A part of his mind acknowledged that Stephen was giving him some time to absorb his surroundings, but the majority of him was too busy coming to terms with what was before him.

His gaze settled and stared for some time upon the floating structures in the sky. In the digging throughout his mind palace for all information about physics he had stored, Sherlock had come across both Einstein's theory of relativity and Newton's law of universal gravitation. Both theories suited for a quick experiment.

He looked at the ground about his immediate person and quickly found a small stone that fit his purposes perfectly. He took two steps to his right, swooped it up into his right hand, and took several steps forward beyond the cavern mouth. Sherlock flung the stone outward towards the abyss with an upward flick of his wrist.

It sunk like a, well, rock. A rock with an Earth-like gravitational pull, even as the large masses beyond floated mockingly in complete contrast.

He glared out at said floating masses as Stephen stepped up towards him. "What was that for?"

"Testing gravitational forces." He continued to glare. "Unfortunately both Newton and Einstein failed to take into account this place with their theories."

"Oh, yeah… no, gravity doesn't exactly work normally here. It's somewhat random."

 _It's utterly infuriating_ , he thought. "It's utterly infuriating," he said also, for emphasis.

Stephen frowned at him; he could hear it in his voice as the doctor said, "Well, if you're going to be throwing rocks about, I better do this now."

 _That_ got Sherlock's attention, and he turned his gaze away from the floating structures to the doctor; he was already gesturing in the air and creating a series of shapes and runes that seemed a bit more complicated than the set that he used against the business card in the cave, and much lengthier than the quick gesture he used to create the light in his hand. He ended his gestures and the collection of shapes and runes sat for a moment. The letters were again in an alphabet Sherlock did not recognize, despite its vaguely runic shape, and he narrowed his eyes in study. "What do—" he started, but Stephen suddenly pushed the bright drawings towards him. He involuntarily flinched away, then immediately straightened with a dark scowl. "What was that?" he demanded.

"Spell of protection and concealment," he answered, seemingly unmoved by Sherlock's annoyance. That just made him more annoyed.

"Aren't you meant to obtain a patient's consent before performing any action upon them, _doctor_?" he snarled in return.

Stephen rolled his eyes. "You're not my patient. Under my protection, currently, yes— and I don't need permission to protect your ungrateful ass."

Sherlock continued to sneer. "I don't _need_ protection."

"That so?" Stephen gestured to the wide, rocky expanse before them. "Then by all means, see yourself out."

The detective narrowed his eyes at the doctor and his expression remained unmoving otherwise, but to his utter annoyance and disgust, he had no comeback for this situation. He, Sherlock Holmes, rendered unable to retort! This place defied all natural laws of physics and nature; his natural talents and learned skill sets were utterly useless here.

In that brief moment, he hated this place more than he hated anything. And he hated Doctor Strange for being a part of it.

Stephen stared at him for a moment longer, then turned away and began heading away from the cave and to the narrow path that led to the flight of stairs and the bridge. Sherlock stared after him for a moment, then— knowing he had no choice— he followed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story was very much inspired by _Strange Tales #110_ (1963), which featured both the first appearance of Doctor Strange and Nightmare, as well as some guy who was trapped in his dreams by Nightmare, and was dreaming of a guy in chains... Nightmare's always had a thing for chains. That and tentacles seem to be recurring themes.
> 
> The best way to explain the ever-shifting appearance of Nightmare over 55 years is to make him a shapeshifter. What demonic being wouldn't be able to shift their appearance a bit? Yes, exactly. And of course he has this power in at least one arc when he (somehow) enters the real world and shifts to a human form to hurt the Ancient One, but that's another story.
> 
> I dedicate the rock part of this chapter to the WikiHow articles that told me everything I had forgotten about igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks. I did ace my geology class back in college and seemed to have deleted 95% of the information learned in it upon class completion.
> 
> With a character such as Sherlock who needs to know everything about anything he considers interesting (and this is definitely interesting), bringing magic into science terms was a part I knew I had to have from the beginning, and so used the basics outlined in the Doctor Strange film to build something that, at least with comic book science, could potentially work.
> 
> I read a lot of Dream Dimension-based and Doctor Strange comics prepping for this story (especially older ones that I had not touched before) and throughout it, it seemed the Eye of Agamotto was the largest example of a Deus Ex Machina, especially in older stories. It also was usually what Strange used as a source of light (usually to blind his enemies and… freeze them in their tracks for some reason, but still). Creating some sort of light source can't be too difficult for a Master of the Mystic Arts, so I gave him that spell in lieu of his ridiculously powerful comic book amulet-that-is-also-a-handy-light-source.
> 
> The supposed workings of space and time within the Dream Dimension, as well as some of its other quirks mentioned in the chapter, are completely made up for the sake of the story. With luck, the mumbo jumbo comic book science sounded plausible in the grand scheme of Marvel science. I am more than open to ideas making mumbo jumbo comic book science sound more plausible, though. I like the idea that magic is very integrated with some scientific theories— after all, magic is just science we don't know! ;) Leave a comment if you have a thought on this.
> 
> I am not 100% certain of the whole scope of the astral form's ability to take damage within the comics, but I like that there was an effect upon it with the right power in the films, and I reflect upon that concept here.
> 
> The Cubs/Cleveland quip is a baseball joke. The Chicago Cubs famously broke their 71-year-drought from playing in the World Series, then broke their 108-year-losing streak (greater than any other baseball team by decades) in 2016 against the Cleveland Indians. Strange would have been training in Kamar-Taj at this time, but I like to imagine that he heard this story from the previous New York Sanctum leader, Master Drumm, before the poor man's unfortunate death sometime in the next year.
> 
> Bora Bora is an island in the French Polynesia, which is located in the South Pacific sort of smack dab between Hawaii and New Zealand (give or take a couple hundred miles…). It has a population of a bit over 10,000 people and looks like a lovely place for a vacation, so long as Nightmare is not bothering people there.
> 
> I imagine every reader here is familiar with modern, popular imagery of Satan; historical illustrations depicted many of the famous aspects of the modern interpretations the same way (horns, hooves or talons, animal-like features across a bipedal body, sometimes wings, occasionally a tail; the bright red skin, however, seems to be a more modern feature). Baigujing is a demon from the novel _Journey to the West_ , published in the 16th century and, in terms of popularity, the _Don Quixote_ of China. She is described as a shapeshifter with her true form being a skeleton. Kali the demon is Hindu in origin (and NOT to be confused with Kali the goddess, also Hindu) and found in the major Sanskrit epic _Mahābhārata_ as well as the _Kalki Purana_ , a secondary Hindu Purana, which in particular he is portrayed as a demon and the source of all evil. While his interpretation varies in various texts, he is generally aligned with evil. Appearance-wise, he was described as a huge being, the color of "soot," and had a large tongue and a terrible stench.
> 
> (Some days I'm doing more researching than writing, but a lot of that is because all these things to learn are so incredibly interesting).


	4. A Long Strange Trip

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I meant to post this before I left the country at the end of January, but I got so busy with work, packing, et al that I just didn't have the time. Then when I got back, my coworker proceeded to give me an awful case of the flu. Finally feel up to actually getting this up.
> 
> The journey from Sherlock's prison and through the Dream Dimension before the climax was originally one chapter, but they kept talking and talking and talking, so I split it into two. But because I split it into two, I needed another illustration sooooo that's cool. You'll find that below.

> "The Dream Dimension! Ever new— ever changing— ever menacing! A kaleidoscopic cosmos filled with shifting shapes and colors— beyond even the imaginings of a Freud— a Dali— a Kandinsky!" — Stephen Strange, _Dr Strange #181_ (1969)

Sherlock retained his muteness while they walked through the unnatural area. Stephen let the silence sit between them as they ascended the stone stairs and crossed over the hill only to come upon a winding path that led away from the sierra-tinted landscape towards a plum-colored set of hills dotted with some sort of species of trees he could not identify from the current distance.

As they continued down the path in its uneven descent, Stephen instigated conversation again. "As we get closer to those hills over there," he gestured towards the deep purple mounds, "you should be on the lookout for anything that appears to be a tear in a physical structure or within the air. These are rifts to leave this dimension. They vary in size and color and sometimes they can be difficult to find, but you're observant and will probably see any that are there to find on our road. Most should be large enough for you to step or dive into."

Sherlock didn't reply. He was still annoyed with him and was currently content to glower. (John would have said 'pout', but John was an idiot. He didn't pout.)

The gold and sierra rock forms slowly became fewer in number as they stepped further into the darker hills. From what he could see, it was the soil and stones themselves that tinted their upcoming surroundings, painted in colors that were unlike any mineral he had ever studied before. He wished he could take samples and examine their composition further.

Their descending path continued in silence as the last of the golden-yellow structures were fully left behind. Through the shades of dark violet cut against the greenish-blue sky Sherlock kept a discerning eye open for one of these so-called rifts mentioned, but nothing appeared. As his guide did not seem concerned, he refused to be concerned either, even if the journey was taking much longer than he had anticipated.

About ten minutes after they had fully left the brighter hills behind, the first plant life started to appear. Thorny brambles began to show up in clumps amongst the rocks, and quickly became thick nuisances with crawling branches encroaching upon the path. Within five minutes of their initial appearance, Sherlock was spending less time eyeing their nearby surroundings for rifts and more time eyeing his footing, which only furthered his annoyance with the situation.

At some point, the doctor took a wider step to avoid some of the branches and the cloak fluttered upward to keep from getting tangled. Sherlock was one hundred percent certain it was not being lifted by any wind.

It was incredibly vexing.

"Would you stop doing that?" he snapped as he lifted the ends of his coat to avoid brushing against the same thorny branches yet again.

Stephen looked over his shoulder, a single brow quirked upwards. "Doing what?" The bottom of his cloak floated away from the ground to avoid more brambles as he turned.

Sherlock gestured towards the red fabric. "That! Your incessant need to display your powers with your cloak to perform tasks that are otherwise absurdly simple is beyond irritating."

The doctor appeared amused by his answer, and that ramped up his annoyance even further. As he was about to unleash a scathing diatribe against the man to show just _how annoyed_ he was, Stephen answered, "I don't control the cloak."

Sherlock frowned. "I've seen it moving unnaturally several times." But of course, with the floating structures, it could be—

"It's sentient."

_What?_ He raised both brows high in disbelief.

"Yeah, really," he insisted. "It has its own will and something of a personality. It chose to be with me, actually."

"That's impossible," Sherlock muttered, brow furrowing as his focus moved from Stephen's face to the garment itself.

The high red collar twitched and the rest of the cloak fluttered in a nonexistent wind. "Are you still using words like impossible after all this?" Stephen asked.

Sherlock pressed his lips together in a tight line. "To even begin to consider a piece of nonliving material as sentient laughs more in the face of reality than all of this."

The doctor shrugged and started onward again. "It may be easier if you try not to think about it and just accept it for what it is."

He huffed derisively. "Easy for those with average minds to do; my brain does not work like that." _Unlike yours_ remained unspoken but heavily implied.

Stephen heard the unsaid insult and he saw him press his lips together a bit more tightly. "Someone once told me that not everything makes sense and that not everything _needs_ to make sense; you either take me at my word and let it be, or drive yourself insane with the lack of acceptance to the fact that you cannot know every answer."

Sherlock fell silent again; that was not the answer he was expecting to his scathing remarks. It was an answer that, admittedly, left him a bit unsettled. His need to _know_ was what drove him through the monotony of life.

The brambles became less cloying as the plant life began to diversify. Gnarled, crimson trees of species he did not recognize began to dot the slopes on either side of the path. Patches of bright purple grass sprung from cracks in the ground and further ahead covered greater expanses in the hills. Mushrooms up to three feet tall began to replace the thorny bushes the further down the path they walked.

It took several minutes, but eventually Sherlock broke the silence that had settled upon them again, if only to draw his mind away from dwelling upon that idea. "Who told you that?"

A couple beats passed before he answered. "My teacher. The one that helped make me who I am now."

"A sorcerer, as you call it?"

"The powers were perhaps the least important lesson she imparted, but yes, that as well."

Interesting. "And how does one go from an out-of-work neurosurgeon to… all of this?" He gestured at their surroundings. "I would imagine most in your situation would have taken on some sort of teaching or consulting job."

Stephen laughed, though it held no hint of joy within it. "If I were a better man in the past, that likely would have happened. But I was the best of the best; the most influential people demanded my services. My research was going to change the future. I had the pick of only the most interesting surgical cases and turned down desperate sob stories that were too boring or that could ruin my perfect record. I had it all—or thought so, anyway."

The detective unconsciously tensed. While they were in very different fields, some of his words sounded… very familiar. He didn't like it at all.

"Coming from all that," he continued, "I was too arrogant to consider the idea of taking a so-called lesser position. I obsessed on fixing my hands. Several months later, with only a few dollars left to my name, I ended up in Kathmandu on a desperate hope and a name."

Kathmandu. That explained the clothing. "The name of this teacher, I suppose?" Sherlock asked as he continued to scan the area for rifts.

Stephen shook his head. "The place where she— and the Masters of the Mystic Arts— resided. Kamar-Taj."

Sherlock thought for a moment; the name did not come up whatsoever in his mind palace. He would have to see if anything appeared on Google later. "And do all sorcerers in your universe hide away in Nepal?"

He huffed softly. "No. Alongside Kamar-Taj, we have Sanctums in Hong Kong, London, and New York. It wouldn't matter really, anyway, if we were just in Nepal; travel is not an issue for us. One of the perks of the job, actually."

Sherlock, however, had all but filtered out his last words when he said 'London'. "Impossible," he stated. "I know every street, every building in London. If something like your order existed in London, I would know about it."

"You should really stop using that word," was Stephen's easy retort. "Besides, this is _my_ London, not your London. If you have a similar order to mine in your world, they may not have the same locations for Sanctums. And they may very well have one in London, anyway; magic can veil things from those not meant to see them, including the keen senses of the great Sherlock Holmes."

There was that all-knowing tone concerning him again. "And that brings up another point: how do you know me?" he asked. It was incredibly obvious that he knew of him somehow— did another version of himself exist there?

Stephen cleared his throat. "Something you need to realize about time is that it's not exactly linear."

He consulted his newly-organized physics and multidimensional corner of his mind palace. "So it's something similar to the Lagrangian Schema as opposed to the Newtonian Schema."

There was a pause. "Absolutely no idea," Stephen admitted. "All I can say is that it's not linear. Because of this, different universes within the multiverse can influence one another from different points in time on a subconscious level. For instance, a universe in which Albert Einstein never made it to adulthood, or was never born at all, might have a physicist dream about Einstein's theory of relativity from another universe, and so introduce the theory to their universe."

He paused again. Sherlock frowned. "Go on," he said with thinly-veiled impatience.

Stephen huffed at the tone. "This happens often with fiction writers. They will dream about another universe, often in a time period different from their own, and they put the dreams to writing. Often enough the writer doesn't even realize that they dreamt about it, even if they dream about the other universe several times. Those who have creative minds, for some reason, are more sensitive to the multiverse and seem to 'see' other realities in their dreams. Even if the dream is not remembered, it remains within the subconscious. And for some reason, certain people, events, and ideas often strike the same individual across multiple realities where the idea would not exist otherwise.

"In several realities, it so happens that a nineteenth century British physician wrote a series of short stories focused upon a genius crime-solver as chronicled by his good friend, fully establishing the detective story genre with his works and creating a character that continues to be widely adapted through every medium you can imagine."

There were many elements in his statement that caused Sherlock to pause. He was not entirely certain how long he remained in his mind to dissect all of this information, but by the time he reemerged, Stephen was staring at him with something that resembled concern.

"Did I break your brain?" the doctor asked.

Sherlock ignored the idiotic question. "Nineteenth century?" was the first question that shoved its way from his head to his mouth.

Stephen nodded. "Late nineteenth, early twentieth. Like I said, time is not linear and that is not unusual."

"How on earth would a nineteenth-century physician apply my methods in the Victorian era?" he huffed. "The use of modern technology is pertinent for getting results quickly."

"The way you figured things out as a kid, I imagine," he replied as he gestured with his head to the path, then continued walking as he spoke. "Books. Letters. Relying on what can be seen in the evidence available rather than relying on labs to confirm things. That said— I'm not entirely sure, I haven't read Doyle since high school— but I think that modern forensics was starting to be developed at the time and that he had a friend who was in that field, or had a similar personality to you or something of the like. I'll have to look it up; it's been a long time."

Sherlock narrowed his eyes at the name. "Doyle."

"Uh, yeah. Arthur Conan Doyle. He's most famous for inventing— at least, people _think_ he invented— Holmes and Watson. I wasn't expecting you to be nonfiction."

The name did not come to mind immediately, but he stored it away for further perusal later. For the moment, he pushed the rather troublesome idea of being a fictional character from the nineteenth century (of all times) out of his head.

Rather Sherlock pursed his lips as he studied the landscape in front of them. The boulder-and-tree-covered slopes of gold, red, and purple to the right of the trail remained consistent. As their travels had continued, though, the land on the left side of the path had started falling away to ever steeper drops. It was now at a point that about ten feet left of the trail led to a steep drop down to a dark abyss that the unnatural, unseen light source could not illuminate.

And there were no rifts, as far as he could see.

"How much further do we need to travel until we find one of these 'rifts'?" he asked.

"I'm not sure," was the unsettling answer. Sherlock sent him an incredulous look, and Stephen added, "I've never been in this part of the Dream Dimension. We're headed in the general direction of where rifts are more likely to turn up, though I'm hoping we'll come across another before then. It's rather a long walk."

"Can't you just…" Sherlock trailed off. He refused to use the word magic in this context, no matter what he had seen earlier.

Stephen seemed to know exactly what he was refusing to say, if the smug smirk was anything to go by. "I'm trying to remain under the radar. If I could guarantee finding a rift the moment I opened a portal, I'd do that. But I can't, and that would draw his attention."

Portals. That was… something. Still, the idea of being in this nonsensical dreamscape for much longer without the ability to even take any samples back with him was absolutely maddening.

Speaking of. "Aren't there meant to be others in here, dreaming?"

"There are," he said. "Most dreamers are in another part of the dimension entirely. Like I said earlier: your location, the state I found you in, your entire predicament is very unusual."

Sherlock sighed. "This place makes no sense. It's incredibly irritating that—"

Stephen suddenly halted in his tracks and held up a hand, cutting Sherlock off with that gesture. He tensed alongside him, but despite holding his breath for a moment to silence his breathing and concentrate on the sounds about them, and despite his ever observant gaze, he saw nothing different— and that was utterly loathsome. He hated the outerworldiness of this place.

"He's coming," said Stephen, his voice grim. "He knows I'm here. I don't think he's sensed you. You need to go."

"What?"

"Go!" he repeated, hissing. "Get out of here! Climb the slopes and follow the direction of the path from behind the rocks until I am well out of range of sight; only then do you get back on the path. It will take a couple more hours until you get to the edge of the dreamers, but you'll find rifts for sure there. You know exactly what you're looking for. You will have no trouble entering through the rift without me, and once you do, you'll wake up."

"I can't—"

Stephen suddenly revolved his right hand clockwise over his left arm in a full circle, just once, before raising one hand towards him, palm forward. A sudden, powerful gust of wind blew Sherlock back a dozen feet. The detective was only barely able to keep his footing and he gaped at the sorcerer in shock as he found his balance.

"He is beyond anything that exists on Earth, Sherlock. You have no idea what's coming. I need all my attention on fending him off and cannot worry about your safety. Now run!" With that, Strange turned around and the detective could not see his range of motion, but two loud _bangs_ and a strange _swish_ came from his general area just before two bright shields the same color as the drawings he made earlier in his prison came to both of his fists. He held himself in a defensive stance, staring out into the red and purple landscape highlighted by a green-blue sky, waiting for something that could not be sensed or seen in normal ways.

Sherlock ran.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I followed the movie's gesture for the Winds of Watoomb, but created a 'weaker' version since he didn't want to hurt Sherlock.
> 
> Sherlock strikes me as the type to retain incredibly specialized knowledge when he thinks it may one day be useful, while deleting everything that is likely not going to be useful in his work, but is common knowledge or easily learned so he doesn't have to remember it. Others will for him if he needs it. That's why he's retained several theories concerning physics but deleted superfluous information regarding grade-school solar system facts.
> 
> For all non-physicists in the audience, if you want to feel really over your head (like me), this is the article I stumbled upon when I looked into nonlinear models of time that delves into the differences between the two spacetime theories. It's mind boggling: http://m.nautil.us/issue/36/aging/to-understand-your-past-look-to-your-future


	5. Astral Doom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The illustration of this chapter partially inspired the battle scene of this story, and is embedded with permission by the lovely [dragonnan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonnan/pseuds/dragonnan). She is active in both the MCU and BBC Sherlock fandom with fantastic art and stories for both Stephen and Sherlock. I recommend checking out her works if you haven't done so!

> "You know the rules of sorcery, Dr. Strange! Those who enter a hostile dimension must be prepared to pay for it— with their lives!" — Nightmare, _Strange Tales #110_ (1963)

Sherlock darted into the hills until he was under the cover of the many gold-tinted boulders that sat in the purple brush. Before he moved further, however, he paused; it was unlike him to take orders so quickly, and something indescribable rolled in his belly at the idea of just leaving. John would maybe understand the strange feeling, but John wasn't on hand at the moment.

So he settled himself upon a sloping boulder in a spot where he had a clear view of the road. Stephen was still alone, but he appeared tense and ready for something, gaze set outward to the lands ahead of them.

The something came suddenly as a dozen thick green—vines? Tentacles? Sherlock couldn't tell—shot up through the dirt around the sorcerer. They came as one, and four of the thick limbs reached for the doctor's arms and legs.

Stephen seemed as surprised as Sherlock by their appearance and his legs and one arm were caught in their hold. However, one of the tentacles missed its target and Stephen sliced through the three that held him down with his orange, shield-like mandala of light. Sherlock squinted as it appeared the other man, once free of the tentacles, was now floating in some capacity. Maybe he was using the same forces that kept the floating structures aloft on this plane?

He filed that thought for later, because Stephen was again beating back thick tentacles grabbing for him; more were emerging with every second and as he cut down those nearest him, keeping him from flying any higher, their numbers would double and continue to grab at his legs, torso, cloak, and arms.

Despite their distance, for reasons unfathomable Sherlock could hear every grunt, exhale, and sounds of exertion as if he were still near. Could the doctor hear him as well? Could those unnatural limbs bursting turn through the ground? It was not a hypothesis the detective dared to test at the moment, not if it distracted the other man or brought those unnatural things his way.

As Stephen continued to cut away at the reaching vines, making some headway up in the air for a few feet only to be pulled back down, Sherlock frowned as he noted the ground several feet behind Stephen start to break apart, though the noise of the tentacles and whatever— _powers_ (he internally grimaced) the doctor was using drowned out the sound of the breaking earth.

With no data of any sort to even begin to calculate the best action regarding the scene caused Sherlock to freeze for several seconds as he debated whether to speak, and if he did, how loudly he should speak.

The pause proved to make his thought process futile. A gigantic, greyish green mass covered in veins and sprouting several thick tentacles burst from the earth behind Stephen and smacked him towards the ground before he could cover himself.

With the lost high ground, Stephen was overwhelmed. Sherlock could see him struggling against the several vines that now restrained him and hear the too-close gasps and the near-silent grunts from his distant vantage point. He could not see him well now, but that he was fully caught was obvious in how the smaller tentacles moved much less than before. One of the larger ones directly connected to the large sac that had just emerged from the earth wound its way into the clump of vine-like limbs, then suddenly held Stephen aloft so Sherlock could see him clearly.

The doctor was bleeding from the nose and mouth, but otherwise seemed uninjured. He was, however, fully restrained; the large limb that had surrounded him fully encircled his chest while another large tentacle pinned his legs together. From the largest tentacle had sprouted more limbs that forced Stephen's hands behind his back and secured them there. He was positioned in the air in front of the massive sac.

And then another limb began to emerge from the center of the mass, and this limb began to form features.

Sherlock was not one to usually describe things as grotesque, but that was one of the first words that came to mind as the creature began to form. The veins upon the tentacle bulged red, and the green darkened to black as it grew upward. The tentacle sprouted limbs that quickly formed into proper arms, and the top of it began to whiten and grow out something resembling hair. In the white the shape of a nose and indents for both mouth and eyes started to appear. As the face and upper half of a vaguely humanoid body were fully formed and the details became more crisp, Sherlock's silent horror grew as he came to terms with what he was seeing.

As Stephen had hinted at earlier, there was no sign of a gangly, ridiculous-looking fellow in a green jumpsuit; rather the form that had emerged from the sac was absolutely monstrous. He had bright stringy hair as thick and sharp as porcupine needles that stuck out and looked ready to impale. His arms were long and bony, and his hands ended with black, talon-like fingernails. Eyes opened in unblinking horror and mouths caught in silent screams adorned the black tunic that melted into the tentacle's form. The white skin on his face was too tight, leaving large fissures across the face to reveal the muscle beneath. His eyes glowed a bright green, no iris or pupil in sight.

The creature lifted Stephen so the sorcerer was at eye level with his face. He bared his teeth in a feral grin.

"Oh Doctor, what a pleasure to see you again, and so soon!"

"I wish I could say the same, Nightmare." By this point, he had ceased struggling, though if it was for appearance alone, Sherlock couldn't say. As if following its owner's will, the cloak was also still at the moment.

Nightmare's smile remained. "What do you think of my look? You were so very _critical_ last time we spoke."

Sherlock heard Stephen grunt at the emphasized word (and _how_ he heard was still bothering him in the back of his mind); the creature must have squeezed him. "Quite frightening," was the stoic answer. "Well done."

Nightmare's grin only grew larger before it suddenly disappeared. "What have you done with my special guest, Strange?" One of the tentacles around his chest began to grow, crawling upwards toward his throat.

Despite his position, Stephen stared him down. "I led him to a rift. He is forever out of your grasp, Nightmare."

The limb continued to crawl upwards. "Until he needs to sleep again. He dislikes visiting this dimension, but rest assured I will recognize him when he enters once more. He had a delicious, unique energy."

The doctor scoffed. "Do you take me for an idiot? I didn't leave him unwarded. No, you will never see him again."

Nightmare sneered, then grinned widely. "It seems I have a vacancy to fill. You will make a most suitable replacement."

With his announcement, the vine-like tentacles quickly sprouted offshoots that formed claw-like hands. Two of the limbs latched their long digits onto Stephen's face, sinking their claws deep into his cheeks and drawing blood. He gasped in pain, and the cloak started to struggle again, the collar wiggling and the long cloth of the fabric pulling outwards. Another hand-like tendril sprouted and grabbed at the red collar to pull it taut.

Stephen visibly winced as Nightmare closed a hand around his neck. The demon then withdrew it, leaving behind a heavy metal collar with cruel spikes digging into the sorcerer's skin. A thin chain dripping with blood followed the stark white hand's path as it drew further away, new links appearing out of the aether as he extended the chain from the collar.

_[Doctor Strange and Nightmare Fanart](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16128680), by dragonnan_

He ended the chain two feet from the collar and pulled him forward, causing Stephen to hiss in pain. "Much better. I think I shall keep you like this. The only question that remains is which one of your delightful memories we should pull from and start with for your nightmare. You have a wonderful collection."

Nightmare waved his free hand towards an empty space in the void just beyond the edge of the nearby ledge, and Sherlock watched in awe as an illusion came into being. The area that formed was dark; the pouring rain was heard more than seen, but beyond the curtain of water he could just make out a mountain road within the shadows. A bright light suddenly approached just before a car—a Lamborghini Huracán—came into view and sped around the bend with a roar of the engine.

He did not need to be told what this was, or what was going to happen next. The illusion followed the speeding car for a few seconds before it came upon another vehicle. As the Lamborghini moved to pass it, its driver merged too soon and the rear hit the front corner of the other car; the explosion of sound, of metal crashing violently into metal deafened the immediate area and Sherlock involuntarily winced. He recovered himself quickly and watched while the vision followed the sports car as it spun out of control and left the road entirely to fall down the mountain; the accompanying sound was unusually loud, and it took him a brief moment to realize that the tearing screeches of metal about them echoed as if they were inside the car itself.

Knowing what powers this Nightmare had to access memories—and while the vision could not be from Stephen's direct memory, but likely rather cobbled together from imagination—the sound most certainly was directly from the doctor's recollection of the crash.

Sherlock tore his eyes away from the disaster to look again at Stephen. The man's eyes were clenched tightly shut and his jaw locked. As the noise faded, he opened them once more and stared defiantly at Nightmare.

The demon canted his head to the side. "But that was an old life, of course. Perhaps something reflecting that change will resonate better." He waved his bony hand again and the rainy mountainside disappeared; in its place was something otherworldly. It too was dark, but bright, neon patches lit the ground, the brightness bursting from strange plants and bubbling from the fissures that covered the surface of the foreground within the vision. Unlike the first vision, it started completely silent. Suddenly, another form of Doctor Strange flew into view and landed upon the alien landscape, looking at something not yet within view. The version of the man within the vision seemed to have just come from some sort of conflict, going by the fresh wounds on his face, and had some sort of green light on his chest and about his wrist with details indeterminable at his current distance. Sherlock spared a glance at the doctor; the man looked upon the vision with grim determination.

There was movement in the vision; within the sky an enormous, flaming purple iris suddenly appeared, and the detective felt his jaw open in utter astonishment at both the sheer size and complete improbability of the creature that came into being. It seemed both solid and gaseous at once in how the edges of its head reacted with the air about it. Before he could even begin to really contemplate the physics of its existence, spears of stone began flying towards the vision of Stephen from several directions, which he blocked with large golden shields similar to what he used earlier with Nightmare. The sound echoed with similar intensity to the previous vision as the stones shattered against the earth and the doctor's shields.

Then the creature blasted some form of energy at him until he disintegrated.

Sherlock stared at the vision in bafflement. Were these visions not formed from Stephen's memories? If this was just a creative nightmare, that would at least explain the impossibility of that creature.

Then in the vision Doctor Strange suddenly flew into view once more, exactly the same as he was before his disintegration. Only a moment passed before two spikes a foot thick and at least six feet tall came out of nowhere and impaled the man. This time, his body and the murder weapons outright disappeared before the doctor flew down once more.

Sherlock proceeded to watch him be cut, exsanguinated, suffocated, impaled, quartered, boiled, electrocuted, strangled, incinerated, crushed, and all-around slaughtered another two dozen times, all in a different way.

It was simultaneously one of the most horrifying and one of the most educational moments of the detective's life.

When the slew of deaths finally ended, he twisted his eyes away from the vision to look at Stephen. His lips were thin, but he looked generally less pained this time around.

 _I guess dying, like everything else, eventually gets boring_ , he thought as Nightmare waved the vision away.

"Not that one either, Doctor? We could always see Dormammu in person; he has been rather irked ever since that little stunt you pulled with the Infinity Stone."

Stephen grimaced as the demon tugged at the chain. "Seems you're more informed than him."

Nightmare bared his teeth in a parody of a grin. "Of course I am. It's hard to miss half of the dreaming population of a universe suddenly gone. It did not take long to figure out the reason or your part within it. Tell you what, Doctor." He pulled his mass of tentacles closer to himself and tugged the chain forward until they were but a few inches apart. "Have the Infinity Stone brought to me and I'll release you. I do like green ever so much."

The sorcerer gritted his teeth as the chain was pulled once more. "No can do," he said through clenched teeth.

The demon in turn tutted at the answer. "Shame. Seems you're here to stay with me, then." Stephen grunted as the tentacles about him tightened their grasp. "And believe me, Doctor; you will be kept in a space so deep within my domain that the Ancient One herself couldn't find you. And she's not around to help anymore, is she?" He grinned. "You blame yourself for that, too. You make this too easy."

He narrowed his eyes at his prisoner. "But that's a dream for another time. It haunts you, just like Dormammu, but that's not the cause of your newest nightmares, is it? No, of course not." Another vision appeared, and Sherlock saw a barren landscape of sienna-colored stone filled with gigantic, eroding steel structures that resembled nothing he recognized. "All your dreams are about your universe's little war and your not-so-insignificant part in it." Strange alien figures appeared upon the landscape, the most prominent two being a thin, grey creature with a flat face and a larger, purple figure wearing a golden gauntlet with shining gems. "Fourteen million scenarios, was that right? Just how many times did you condemn half the universe to death?"

Sherlock grimaced; the more this demonic entity spoke, the more Sherlock wondered just how different their two worlds were. He didn't keep up with international news, but even he would know if something as exotic as alien lifeforms had made contact with Earth.

But Nightmare's monologuing did give Sherlock one advantage, and that was time to consider a plan to help his companion out of his predicament—and he had wasted too much time gawking at the visions rather than thinking. _Idiot_ , he scolded himself, then fully turned his mind away from the scene, tuned their conversation out, and steepled his hands in front of his face, smashing them against his lips in agitation. _Think, think, think, think!_ This very well may be a demonic entity, but that did not mean it was an _unbeatable_ demonic entity. Surely it had some sort of weaknesses or flaws he could exploit.

He peered again around the rock to study the mass of tentacles. One core limb supported Nightmare's form, and another massive one was the main form restraining Stephen. More importantly, it was connected to the same tendrils that restrained his hands, which seemed vital for Stephen's abilities. So all he needed to do was distract Nightmare to get close enough to the tentacle that held up Stephen, then incapacitate it to the point that the doctor could pull his hands free.

Should be easy enough.

He pushed any niggling doubts to the back of his mind with a vengeance. First things first: weapon. While something heavy would work, it would be difficult to maneuver; rather, something long and sharp would be preferable.

His eyes scanned the low branches and undergrowth of the scattered trees that stood behind him. About twenty yards away he spotted the perfect branch: long with a sharp end and straight enough to conceal within his coat. With as much haste as he could while still remaining silent, Sherlock sped to his choice of makeshift weaponry and picked it up for a quick inspection and test of strength. About three feet long, two centimeters thick, no cracks, and it did not falter against the soft soil upon the ground when he struck it once.

That would do.

On the way back to his cover, he also collected several smaller stones, placing them in his coat's pockets. They could serve as a form of distraction or as a weapon as needed. It was irritating not to be confidently several steps ahead of the game, but this was very different from his usual battlefield. And he could adapt as needed.

Sherlock made his way back to his place of cover to see if any change had happened in the minute he was gone. Nightmare was still monologing, but in that time two more small offshoots from the large tentacles had sprouted and were now clawing into Stephen's arm and leg.

Best to go in now before more injury occurred.

He wasn't entirely sure if he was able to sneak up on the demon, but he felt it was worth a shot. He tucked the stick away under his coat and crept away from the rocky hillside, going a long roundabout way so as to approach Nightmare from behind. He kept to what cover he could find on his approach, though his black coat did him no favors against the golden stones and scarlet tree trunks. If Nightmare was paying any attention to his surroundings, the scant cover would have proven entirely inadequate.

Lucky for Sherlock, the demon was more interested in taunting his prisoner, and the detective continued to filter out the monologue (something about universal death and suffering; he'd analyse it later). He also purposefully filtered the pained grunts and sharp gasps that came from Stephen which were a bit—bothersome for reasons he couldn't quite explain (the strange proximity of the sounds, perhaps).

Regardless, this distraction gave him the opportunity to get behind a thick red trunk about fifteen feet from the large sac that Nightmare had emerged from and another five feet further to the tentacle that was his primary target. Beyond them, about a dozen feet away from the edge of the road, the land dropped into a steep fall that had no visible slope, with the land underneath potentially being concave. He had no idea as to how high they stood to whatever lay beyond the abyss.

More importantly, that side of the road provided no cover for him, and this tree was the last of any cover on his side of the road. He would have to step his way forward and hope Stephen didn't give him away.

Sherlock pressed his lips in thought; if he showed something of himself to Stephen from where he was now, would that be better for the doctor as to not give him away? Uncertain; people reacted differently to such things and who could say how good of an actor Stephen was.

Still, he might be able to duck back behind the tree if Stephen made a face now, and it was unlikely Nightmare would investigate; what would he have to fear in 'his realm', as he put it? With that thought in mind, Sherlock carefully looked behind the tree and looked purposefully at Stephen.

At that point, the faded and stationary eyes on Nightmare's top turned to stare directly at his position. The screaming mouths closed, only to grin, and in one voice they spoke.

"You have been sneaking and skulking long enough. Why don't you come out now and say hello like a proper guest?" Then Nightmare turned his body to look at him, and as the green glow of his eyes centered upon him, a wave of sheer terror that was wholly unnatural washed over him.

New plan, then.

Sherlock quashed the unwelcome fear with a level of ruthlessness he only used upon himself, then strode out from behind the tree as casual as can be. "You seemed to be in the middle of something rather personal; I didn't want to interrupt." From the corner of his eye he caught the look of dismay on Stephen's face at his appearance.

Nightmare grinned. "Hardly an interruption—Sherlock Holmes, wasn't it?" His pupil-less eyes narrowed. "I've heard your name before across the dreams of the multiverse, but not like this."

"Apparently I'm a very popular fictional character in other universes," Sherlock replied as he walked closer. Eleven feet from Nightmare and the sac now, and sixteen from the target tentacle.

"That happens, sometimes," said Nightmare. "But it's never taken the face of a sorcerer." Some of the unoccupied tentacles began to twitch.

Sherlock continued moving forward at an easy, unhurried pace. Eight and thirteen feet. "I'd rather say he stole my face. And I'm not a sorcerer; I'm a consulting detective." Seven and twelve. Stephen was smart enough to keep his mouth shut, though Sherlock could see that he was wondering what he was planning.

He was close enough that Nightmare loomed several feet over him. The demon dropped his hold on the chain that linked to the collar around Stephen's neck and brought himself closer to Sherlock. "What you are out there matters little here. Here, you're mine."

"But not for very long, from what I understand," Sherlock countered.

Nightmare frowned. "What are you talking about?"

"As you said not too long ago, you found my aura 'delicious' and 'unique', which is quite understandable if you're used to consuming the energies of the dull plebeians that make up the rest of humanity." Another step forward and half a step to the side. "But at the rate you were consuming it, you were going to kill me sooner rather than later."

"Mortals are prone to being weak," Nightmare shot back.

"Compared to a being such as you, certainly," he replied. "But I don't see why we can't make this situation beneficial for us both."

The demon raised his brows. "And what do you think _you_ could offer me that would interest me more than your life's energy?"

Sherlock started to go around him, so as to maintain his six feet from him but get closer to the tentacle that held Stephen. Six and eight feet. "A system that will allow you to unleash the most efficient horrors on any person's mind."

Nightmare narrowed his eyes. "Humans create their own nightmares from their fears; I need not interfere."

"But the nightmare a person creates is not necessarily the most effective one that would produce the most energy for you," he countered, taking another step. He made sure to keep his gaze away from Stephen. "It's statistically improbable for every individual you feed upon to be in a nightmare, and even more unlikely for the nightmare to be the most fear-inducing. It takes time and effort on your part to weed through all of an individual's thoughts to find the nightmares, does it not?"

"Time is plentiful for me," he countered.

"But not for the dreamer," said Sherlock. "And the effort of weeding through all the vapid thoughts of all these boring, ordinary people is such a waste of efficacy that could be spent consuming significantly more energy if you knew exactly what would be the most potent way to scare each individual." Another step.

Nightmare again lifted his brows. "And you know what would scare each individual?"

A half step. "Of course. That's my job. Give me three minutes in someone's house and I can tell you everything vital about them. A vision within their dreams will be child's play in comparison. I can profile their worst nightmares that go beyond their natural bad dreams."

The demon frowned at him again. "And why would you want to do that?"

"Because my time asleep is wasted time and my time awake is often spent bored. If I could instead experiment with your subjects while I dream, I can take those experiments and analyse the results while awake to continue and create a more efficient system. You may not receive the full effect of my aura as you would if I were in nightmares, but my constant presence should give you some fuel while you achieve higher efficiency through my deductions, and I'll last a good deal longer for you."

"You make an interesting offer," Nightmare said with a slight smirk. "All because you're bored. But that is one of your greatest fears, Sherlock Holmes: neverending boredom."

"As I said, this would be mutually beneficial," Sherlock answered, making another half step towards Stephen. He was perhaps five feet away from the limb that held the doctor; a couple small steps and he would be exactly where he wanted to be.

Nightmare finally looked at his captive and sneered at him before turning that sneer to Sherlock. "You don't mention the sorcerer in your bargain."

"Why should I?" Sherlock asked. "It's his fault I'm here in the first place."

A bark of laughter came from Nightmare. "The ruthlessness of humans will never cease to amuse me." He turned towards Stephen, and Sherlock took a couple more steps as the demon said, "I really ought to thank you for your interference, Strange; I have an intriguing new project to start and I would have never had the opportunity without you." Stephen pressed his lips together and said nothing.

Sherlock gripped the thick stick inside his coat. "I ought to thank you for the opportunity as well," he said.

Nightmare glanced down at him with a smirk. "Oh, are you looking forward to it?"

Sherlock smiled. "Tremendously." And with one fluid movement, he drew the stick out and slammed it down into the base of the tentacle holding Stephen aloft.

Motion and sound exploded about him. There was Nightmare's piercing shout of pain and anger, the thrashing of dozens of limbs, sudden electric sparks of magic, and through it all Sherlock did his best to get the hell out of the way.

He made it two steps before one of the larger tentacles looped around his neck and lifted him up as it began to squeeze. Sherlock pulled and scratched at the limb as he began to lose air, but its hold was relentless. His vision began to fade.

He heard sparks, many sparks, and then suddenly Sherlock could breathe though he was falling, but the fall was only a few feet and though he fell on his hands and knees and was gasping for breath, and he was also scrambling back up, quick and running, just trying to put distance between him and the grasping limbs. Sherlock made it another three feet, then there was something around his ankle and then he was on the ground and being dragged—then he was not, he was free and he tried to get up, but he had barely taken a step when another tentacle got around his leg, and he had nothing sharp but plenty of rocks—and so he drew one of the stones from his pocket and looked behind him. Stephen was fully free of the demon's tentacles and the thick collar was gone. Nightmare was trying to grab Stephen again, but Stephen was high in the air and counteracting his tentacles and—something purple and staticy that came from Nightmare's hands, God knows what—and if the damned demon wasn't going to let him sit this out, he'd make his annoyance known. He waited until Stephen was clear of his field, then aimed straight for Nightmare's ridiculous-looking head.

The stone struck the demon right at his temple, causing him to falter, but Sherlock did not get a chance to celebrate because one second he was on the ground and the next he was up in the air, then the next he was flung through the air, away from the fight—right off the cliffside.

Right into the abyss.

Stephen had said that if he died in the Dream Dimension, his body could very well die outside in the physical world, and Sherlock couldn't believe that he was actually going to die in his sleep and no one in said physical world would actually know the death was much less mundane than it sounded.

He processed the fact that he was very likely going to die, then suddenly realized that he actually didn't want to die. There was Moriarty, for one thing—he needed to catch him before he died, that was a must. He was nowhere near finished with all the experiments he had planned out, either, and he couldn't die before those were completed. And then there was John. John was something different. Sherlock wanted to see where the world went with John, if things would continue like they were. The last three months had been spectacular; he needed to know if that would be the case for the next year, or three years, or three decades. He couldn't die.

Sherlock saw a flash of red before he stopped falling. He didn't hit the ground, he simply—stopped. And was going back up. Flying up. He looked and saw Stephen's red cloak hugging his shoulders.

The doctor's cloak made him fly. This was—this was absolutely spectacular.

He took the next few seconds to simply enjoy the sensation of weightlessness as he came to the edge of the abyss once more, before he could see what was happening with the fight. Those few seconds made one of the best moments of Sherlock's life and he carefully preserved the memory between falling and coming back to the battle in a special place in his mind palace.

But all good things come to an end, and they were back on land. The cloak took him to a safe distance away from the cliff's edge, some twenty yards away from the fight, before leaving his shoulders and speeding off towards Stephen again. The doctor, even without flying, seemed to have the upper hand at the moment. All of the tentacles appeared to be cut or otherwise neutralized and Nightmare seemed to be putting all of his energy in whatever that purple, staticy power was, blasting at Stephen while the other blocked it before returning fire with some sort of electrical bolts.

Twenty yards was too far from the action for Sherlock and he slunk his way forward, cutting the distance in half and situating himself behind another large boulder. He took a stone out of his pocket and waited to see if further intervention on his part was necessary as he watched.

Stephen's cloak was again with the doctor again, carrying him through the air—and why was he suddenly considering Stephen's earlier words concerning the cloak's sentience more plausible now? Absurd, idiotic.

However the mechanics of the cloak worked, Stephen was flying and dodging half the shots from Nightmare while the other half he blocked. There was no knowledge in the vastness of Sherlock's mind palace that could fully describe the mechanics of the fight, but it was easy enough to determine that, after about a minute of watching, that the two seemed to be at a stalemate.

Sherlock narrowed his eyes as he studied Nightmare's eldritch form. Despite being something that did not exist in the real world, there still had to be a weaker part of the anatomy. There always was. Stephen's waves and bolts of energy seemed to be doing very little to the various tentacle-like limbs beyond keeping them inert, and everything aimed directly at Nightmare was usually deflected and even those hits weren't doing enough for the amount of time it took to get a hit near his chest and face.

He tried to look more closely, study every detail he could make out at his current distance from Nightmare's monstrous form. His eyes landed to the base of the main tentacle, to the large, sac-like structure that held him aloft. It looked like a very veiny area as compared to the tentacles, indicating the vessels (in a logical situation) were closer to the surface and a potential weaker spot.

It was worth a shot.

"Aim for the clump of veins in the sac!" he called, and gratifyingly Stephen listened immediately, throwing several little blasts of energy at the area that looked most like the powerhouse of the creature. Sherlock saw an immediate effect: Nightmare recoiled at each blow, and while they were subtle flinches, he didn't miss them.

"See that?" Sherlock muttered, testing if Stephen could hear him at long distances as well.

"Yes," was Stephen's quick reply before he shielded another attack, then sent several more energy blasts at the sac. "Good call."

Of course it was a good call; it was he who had called it. But even Sherlock realized this was not the time to mention that. So instead he observed the battle, in particular the appearance of the sac and how the blows were affecting Nightmare with each attack.

The results were proving promising. It was taking some time, but there was definitely some sort of weakening in the structure; with the blows, the various neutralized limbs were starting to clench and strain, and the main limb holding Nightmare up was beginning to stagger much more than before. The demon seemed to change his focus to expand more energy into the tentacles and paused in his hits to strengthen his defense. He moved several of his limbs to cover the sac in some bid to protect it, but Stephen was very precise; the limbs weren't large enough to cover it fully, and he aimed his shots between the tentacles to continue his assault on the sac itself.

Suddenly one of the formerly inert limbs grabbed at Stephen's leg again, and that seemed to push the doctor to conclusively end the fight in his next move. Sherlock could feel the static electricity in the air grow (somehow, inexplicably) as the cloak blocked another limb from grabbing his arm. The sorcerer brought his hands together and made a motion with his fingers before blasting a sharp wave of something that sparked in strong electric energy towards the center of the sac.

That did it. With that last large bolt of energy, the sac began to contort and shrink as the numerous tentacles withdrew towards its collapsing form. Nightmare's form began to wither and the demon screeched in anger and pain as the stalk that held him aloft began to pull back into the sac.

A concussive shock wave nearly knocked Sherlock off his feet; only grabbing on a branch of one of the red trees allowed him to keep his stance. The explosion from the sac emitted a bright purple light tinged in green that was unlike any sort of reaction the detective had ever seen before.

When the light dissipated, the large sac and all of the viney tentacles were gone, and in its place was a gangly-looking humanoid kneeling on the ground, panting. He had stringy light grey hair, stark white skin, and wore the strangest-looking green jumpsuit. After his previous spectacle, Nightmare did not look intimidating in the slightest.

Stephen hovered in front of him, power radiating from his entire form. Sherlock took a few cautious steps closer towards the sorcerer as the man said, "This whole exercise was entirely unnecessary."

Nightmare lifted his head and, rather than replying to Stephen, set his gaze on Sherlock a few yards further. "That was a dirty trick," he said, clearly referencing the start of the fight.

"All's fair in love and war," Sherlock said in return.

The demon cackled softly. "You're ruthless. I like you." Sherlock was left in a rare moment of not knowing what to say.

Stephen rescued him from having to come up with a reply. "Back off and let us leave here without further hassle, Nightmare. If you don't, I'll wake up every single soul asleep here and I know that will be _incredibly_ unpleasant for you."

Nightmare sneered at him. "You'd break natural law to inconvenience me?"

"In a heartbeat," Stephen retorted. "Leave us alone and you won't need to worry about it."

The demon narrowed his eyes, then snarled. "Fine—for until you leave. The next time I find you in here, Strange, you're fair game."

"I wouldn't expect anything less," was Stephen's dry reply.

Nightmare stood and mockingly bowed to them in acquiescence. Then he snapped and he was gone from sight.

Stephen kept up his guard for a minute longer, then exhaled and finally lowered himself from the air to stand on solid ground once more. "He's gone. And I don't think he currently has the strength to bother us again while we're here; he'll need some time to recuperate." He was breathing heavily, his exhaustion clear to even the most stupid of people. Sherlock wasn't sure if Stephen had the energy to combat anything else, either.

"Good," was what Sherlock ended up replying. "As interesting as that experience was, I'd rather not repeat it."

The sorcerer turned to look at him, wearing a soft frown. "You didn't need to go through it in the first place. Why didn't you run?"

Sherlock met his gaze evenly, chin lifted high in confidence. "I did run. Then I came back."

Stephen shook his head at that. "Well, I can't say I don't appreciate it. Nightmare couldn't keep me trapped for long—my absence would certainly be noticed, and eventually I would be able to potentially free myself—but I do know he would have made it unpleasant."

He shrugged off the thanks and instead asked about the one element that was still bothering him (or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say currently bothering him more than everything else of this implausible enigma surrounding him). "Why could I hear you and the demon so clearly from a distance?"

"I think it's a side effect of the ward I put on you," Stephen said after a moment. "Nightmare didn't hear us, so I believe my proximity to him allowed you to hear him as well as myself. It should wear off eventually, but we'll probably be out of this dimension before it does, and it won't be an issue then."

"I hope not; I'd rather not hear your conversations in my head for any length of time in my reality," Sherlock said with a puckered look. "My mind is too loud as is. Now, shall we get going? I don't want to be here any longer."

Stephen huffed in amusement. "Yeah, I've had my fill of the Dream Dimension today. It shouldn't be much longer, and we shouldn't have any further delays now."

With that, the two turned back to the road and left the site of battle without further discussion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was stuck on the last 1000 or so words at the end for like, a month, but finally cranked them out this last week. The last chapter should be much shorter than the previous chapters, I think, so I shall hopefully have it out soonish. I definitely want to finish this story before spring ends.


	6. Strange Days Ahead

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whelp, I was planning to finish this a lot sooner and not, like nearly 8 months after the last chapter I posted, but 2020 (you all know what I mean) hit my muses hard and I've barely written or created anything artistic this year. I finally got my muses to start chipping away at creative items this summer and wrote this chapter in the fall. Thank you for sticking around, those who have.

> "I had no idea that such individuals exist outside of stories." — John Watson, _A Study in Scarlet_ (1887)

The rest of the walk was—not exactly uncomfortable. There was something of a strange camaraderie they seemed to have developed in defeating a demonic horror that shouldn't technically exist.

(He'd worry about that part once he was out of here.)

Still, it took about an hour after their encounter until they found one of these rifts. It was exactly as Stephen had described it would be: an off-color rip in the middle of the air. This one was about a metre long, deep purple, and emitted a static electricity all about the air around it.

"Not difficult to find at all," Sherlock commented as he eyed it. "How does it work?"

"Not sure," Stephen replied, and ignored the look Sherlock sent to him in turn. "For this one, you can just go arms or face first and then you'll end up back in your reality."

"That's all?"

"That's all. Oh, though," Stephen started to add, "from what I understand, you may not entirely remember all this. You have been an anomaly from most other people in your experience here, though, so maybe you will. I'm not entirely sure."

Sherlock pursed his lips together at the comment. His initial emotion is that _of course_ he would want to remember, but he could not deny that there was a small part of him that would not mind his knowledge of physics and science and the natural world being completely and utterly solid rather than this mismatch of uncertainty that currently wove itself through his entire mind.

He kept his thoughts to himself and instead concentrated on the matter of the rift. No matter how long he studied it, it gave him no further answers as to its workings. It was annoying, but even he realized there was nothing for it—and truly little point in studying it if he could not do so in the real world without some tools to help him. Here, he just was not able to collect the data he needed from visuals alone. And above all that, he may not even remember any of it.

The whole situation truly was incredibly frustrating. "Fine," was Sherlock's eventual response. What else was there to say?

He stepped towards it, then paused as a voice in his head that was starting to suspiciously sound like John reminded him of basic niceties. "Goodbye, Doctor Strange."

Stephen huffed in amusement. "Good bye and good luck, Sherlock Holmes."

He made a face at the wording. _Good luck_. Luck was superstitious nonsense—hopefully so. Surely it still was.

It was best not to think about it too much. He banished the idea of luck being anything more than just that as he, without hesitation, thrust his left arm into the rift. When nothing happened, he ducked and leaned in to push his head through the crack between realities—

And then he was suddenly not standing anymore but falling, falling into the pitch black—not pitch black, but deep purple dotted with little white stars, or some sort of illusion—

Then it went truly black and silent.

* * *

The blackness around him faded into a soft grey.

He immediately identified it as the grey found when muted daylight hit closed eyelids. He was waking up, but that didn't quite feel right; he was pretty sure he was just awake doing—something. What that 'something' was escaped him utterly, but he was more or less certain it was something other than sleeping. The lack of complete certainty was a bit of a bother, though.

His sense of touch was coming back, too. Sherlock felt soft sheets underneath his back and encasing his arms and covering his chest (rather than… something else. _What was it?_ ). Somewhere in his vicinity was another person by the soft sound of breathing he could hear. Why was there someone in his room?

No, no, stupid, stupid. This was not his room. It didn't smell at all like his room. Furthermore, he could distinctly feel several small items on his chest under the sheet, something else sticking in his arm, one of his nostrils felt unusually clogged, and between his thighs—oh for God's sake, he was in a bloody hospital.

Sherlock opened his eyes to see himself in an upscale private hospital room that screamed of Mycroft's influence. The room was spacious and filled with its own supply of various medical equipment, including a muted EKG with wires trailing from his chest to the machine itself on his right. He could also see his arm was stuck with a needle receiving something he couldn't read off the IV bag hanging from the pole at his bedside. Saline, maybe.

The majority of his body was covered by a light blanket (sheet, really), but he could very much feel the catheter, even if he couldn't see it. He could also feel what he suspected was a feeding tube trailing from his nostril and taped to his left cheek. On the wall opposite the bed was a counter and cabinet, likely filled with more medical supplies, and to his right was a large window overlooking a grey, typical dreary London day.

On the cushioned couch against the window and not far from his bed was John, one leg over his knee, a newspaper spread between both hands and obscuring half of his face. John also had coffee on the table in front of him.

Coffee sounded amazing at that moment.

He stirred to reach for the cup as quietly as he could, but John caught his movement and started. "Oh, thank God," the doctor sighed.

Sherlock paused. "Thank God? Thank God for what? What good would that do you?"

John folded his newspaper and gave Sherlock a long stare, one of his patented 'you're missing something obvious and I am concerned' stares. "Haven't you noticed that you're in hospital, Sherlock?"

"Of course I have," he scoffed. He paused, brow furrowing in thought. "Why _am_ I here? We weren't on a case, that much I remember." There was something else, though, something… odd. Something…

"You've been here for two days," John interrupted his thoughts. "We couldn't wake you up. You had fallen into some sort of coma."

He frowned at John. " _Some sort_ of coma?" he asked. "Is that your professional opinion?"

John shook his head. "You were a six on the GCS," he explained, "but your brain activity was completely abnormal for a coma patient. I've never heard of anything like it."

Sherlock narrowed his eyes. "Explain."

Instead of immediately replying, John stood up and went to the far counter where a folder sat. He skimmed through it before pulling out a few papers and then approached the bed. "This one," he pulled out a paper with two colored images of the brain, "is what the brain of a conscious person looks like. A PET scan and fMRI scan, respectively." He pulled out another. "And this one," which turned out to be another sheet with both PET and fMRI scans on it, "is what the brain of a typical coma patient looks like."

"Yes, I see the lack of activity in the latter brain, though I imagine that even unconscious I have more activity in my brain than most people." It certainly felt like that with the dullness of the general populace, at least.

John rolled his eyes. "Doesn't quite work like that." He pulled out a third sheet. "This was your brain when you were in a coma."

Sherlock narrowed his eyes at the colored scan. "It's different from consciousness."

"Yes," he replied, "and very different from a coma patient. From what the doctor told me, it most resembles the brain of someone that's in REM sleep. It's not supposed to be possible, but it looked like you were still going through the sleep cycle at a GCS of six and stuck in the dreaming phase."

Dream. Something in the back of his mind tickled him, some sort of data that was crying to be let out. Dream, dream, what was it about dreams—

"All very strange, frankly—"

Sherlock didn't hear anymore of John's words as he suddenly _remembered._

Doctor Strange. Dreams. A world of dreams. Nightmare.

He wasn't sure how long it was before John realized he wasn't paying him attention any longer, but he came back to the real world as John was leaving the room, saying something about getting the doctor.

Sherlock stared up at the ceiling in silent thought in reply.

* * *

The doctor wanted to do all of these tests for his unusual case. Sherlock said no.

John tried to convince him otherwise, in case there was something they were missing in his brain. Sherlock still said no; what they were missing wasn't likely to be physical, and if they didn't catch it in the last two days, they certainly weren't going to catch it now.

Mycroft tried to threaten him. It was ridiculous and not worth any of his time or energy.

But eventually he got his way and was released from hospital to go back to Baker Street. When he got back, he sequestered himself in his room and began to carefully rebuild part of his mind palace into two parts: what was known to be fact, and what he had experienced during his time in his inexplicable coma.

It took two days of concentrated thought before he was ready to get back to taking on cases once more.

John asked, of course. But Sherlock could give him no answers that wouldn't raise more questions or, worse, concerns. And so he remained silent and, eventually, John stopped asking.

A few weeks later, he decided to take up a case about comic book characters coming to life. "Interesting," he had told his new client with little explanation. John was also curious as to why he found this case, out of all cases, particularly interesting. Sherlock didn't bother filling him in.

They ended up in a comic book store, he and John, to pick up copies of the issues that these comic book characters were supposedly coming from. While John got in line to purchase them, however, a colorful cover with a distinct name caught Sherlock's attention.

He slowly walked over to the stand and stared at the red and gold colors that surrounded the staring visage of the dark-haired man on the cover. The title _Doctor Strange: The Oath_ shouted soundlessly back at him.

He stared at it for he could not say how long, but then John was at his elbow and he was asking, "Found something?"

Sherlock looked away. "Nothing relevant." With that, he took off and left the comic book store.

If he did end up returning, he decided, he would never tell John. What happened—whether it was reality or a fabrication of his mind—was his experience. It was for him to mull over, him to determine the reality of the scenario, and him to investigate with what details he was able to gleam from Doctor Strange over their time together.

And while he had no plans on following up upon it now, what with real cases with real clients starting to come to him more often than ever before in his life, it was still a situation that he planned to investigate some day in the future.

But for now, the Work was present and he was Sherlock Holmes.

And Sherlock Holmes would see the Work done.

> "So it turned out that [the client] started to see members of KRATIDES in the real world. He'd seen Sophy, the Wolflady, disposing of some unattended luggage in New Cross Station. He'd spotted The Flying Bludgeon tackling a mugger on Wandsworth Common. He'd even photographed Professor Davenport, the leader of KRATIDES, in Beckenham. If it wasn't for the photo, I'd have said it was all in his head but there he was - the blue-skinned Professor Davenport. Standing outside Greggs.
> 
> And as if that wasn't bizarre enough, all these events had already happened in the comics. Graphic novels. Comic books. Whatever.
> 
> Sherlock said that there were three possibilities - one was that KRATIDES actually existed. A possibility I actually think he was taking seriously."
> 
> — An excerpt from [_The Geek Interpreter_](http://www.johnwatsonblog.co.uk/blog/16june), a blog post by Dr John H Watson (2010)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still not a doctor. I just like reading about this stuff.
> 
> The Glasgow Coma Scale, or GCS, is a scale ranging from 1-15 measuring how conscious you are. A patient with a score of 8 or lower is considered to be in a coma. From what I understand, when you're unconscious, you lose the circadian cycle and thus the sleep cycle. The sleep cycle is what brings REM sleep, which is when you dream. As consciousness is a binary function in the brain, theoretically speaking, you shouldn't be able to dream while in a coma. Of course, this negates many personal stories of people saying they have dreams from their time in a coma, so science still doesn't know what's happening here. In this fic's case, it's very much due to extra-dimensional tomfoolery.
> 
> I chose The Oath in particular because, alongside being one of the better Doctor Strange comic book stories, it also has a Sherlock Holmes reference within it. At least within our universe's version ;)
> 
> The drawing's mine and is compiled from half a dozen stock photos. Medical accuracy of equipment, while I gave it my best shot, is still dubious.
> 
> If you follow the link you'll see that I pulled that quote straight from John's blog (made by the BBC). Sometimes things just come together nicely. This was not something I had realized from the beginning was a quote from it, haha.
> 
> Thank you for sticking around for the end of this story. Let me know what you thought of it, if you can :) As always, I post on-and-off basically fandom-centric content over on [my tumblr](https://aelaer.tumblr.com).


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